A molecular Debye-Hückel theory and its applications to electrolyte solutions: The size asymmetric case

A molecular Debye-Hückel theory for electrolyte solutions with size asymmetry is developed, where the dielectric response of an electrolyte solution is described by a linear combination of Debye-Hückel-like response modes. As the size asymmetry of an electrolyte solution leads to a charge imbalanced border zone around a solute, the dielectric response to the solute is characterized by two types of charge sources, namely, a bare solute charge and a charge distribution due to size asymmetry. These two kinds of charge sources are screened by the solvent differently, our theory presents a method to calculate the mean electric potential as well as the electrostatic contributions to thermodynamic properties. The theory has been successfully applied to binary as well as multi-component primitive models of electrolyte solutions.