ABSTRACT

This chapter begins with homogeneous bulk phases consisting of classical plasmas, that is, gaseous electrolytes treated in classical statistical mechanics. A charged particle immersed in a bulk electrolyte is, surrounded by an ion cloud with a net charge opposite to that of the particle. In the Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) approximation for electrolyte solutions, the central ion is, treated in a different manner than the surrounding ions, including those of the same species as the central one. In the PB treatment of electrostatic interactions in electrolytes, one neglects the correlation between the ions in the ion cloud around the central ion or around any other kind of particle one considers, for instance macroions. The chapter discusses a presentation of the Debye-Huckel theory, which is the classical approximate theory for bulk electrolytes. The one-component plasma in the bulk phase is rather artificial.