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Electric Currents and Transport of a Dilute Species to Generate IV Sweep Plots

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Hello community,

I've created a working and functional model that shows the migration of two oppositely charged species over time in response to an applied electric potential through the bulk material. I used electric currents and transport of a dilute species to model this.

The model works great and has no errors. I used a parametric sweep (-20V to 20V) of an applied voltage at an interface which affects the electric potential throughout the bulk material.

I chose to use use a -20 to 20V parametric sweep because in real life, my research group is researching the current-voltage plots of our model under these conditions. In the lab, we induce an electric potential, the ions in the solution migrate, and then we change the voltage to the next step (-20 to -19 to -18 etc.) All the while, we are using other instruments to calculate the current through a specific area. This current, is of course, affected by both the induced electric potential as well as the charged ions.

The issue that I'm experiencing, though, lies in how COMSOL solves for the parametric sweep. In the parametric sweep of the applied voltage at a specified interface, COMSOL solves for each value of parametric voltage independently of the other values. That is, it shows how the ions react to a voltage over time, and then when a new voltage is induced, it considers the concentration profile to have started back at 0, independent of where the ions were previously at the end of the time-dependent study for the previous parametric voltage value.

This is an issue because this is, of course, not how the ions react in real life. In the lab, when changing induced voltages, the ions begin at the concentration profile at which they were associated at the instant the new voltage was applied. They don't instantaneously return to a homogeneous solution in the bulk material.

My question: Is it possible to sort of "link" the parametric sweep somehow so that the concentration profile of the ions at the end of the time step for one voltage is carried over to the beginning concentration profile when changing the parametric voltage? Or maybe some other way so that the simulation is more realistic? Or is this just out of COMSOl's computational capabilities?

We can't simulate an actual IV curve for the parametric sweep in COMSOL, because currently the ions instantaneously return to a homogenous profile when the new parametric voltage step is computed.

Thank you for any help and responses,

Buck Bourdon

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