Increasing evidence suggests that the presence of mobile ions in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) can cause a current–voltage curve hysteresis. Steady state and transient current–voltage characteristics of a planar metal halide CH3NH3PbI3 PSC are analysed with a drift-diffusion model that accounts for both charge transport and ion vacancy motion. The high ion vacancy density within the perovskite layer gives rise to narrow Debye layers (typical width ~2 nm), adjacent to the interfaces with the transport layers, over which large drops in the electric potential occur and in which significant charge is stored. Large disparities between (I) the width of the Debye layers and that of the perovskite layer (~600 nm) and (II) the ion vacancy density and the charge carrier densities motivate an asymptotic approach to solving the model, while the stiffness of the equations renders standard solution methods unreliable. We derive a simplified surface polarisation model in which the slow ion dynamics are replaced by interfacial (non-linear) capacitances at the perovskite interfaces. Favourable comparison is made between the results of the asymptotic approach and numerical solutions for a realistic cell over a wide range of operating conditions of practical interest.

We propose unbalanced versions of the quantum mechanical version of optimal mass transport that is based on the Lindblad equation describing open quantum systems. One of them is a natural interpolation framework between matrices and matrix-valued measures via a quantum mechanical formulation of Fisher-Rao information and the matricial Wasserstein distance, and the second is an interpolation between Wasserstein distance and Frobenius norm. We also give analogous results for the matrix-valued density measures, i.e., we add a spatial dependency on the density matrices. This might extend the applications of the framework to interpolating matrix-valued densities/images with unequal masses.

The multifrequency electrical impedance tomography consists in retrieving the conductivity distribution of a sample by injecting a finite number of currents with multiple frequencies. In this paper, we consider the case where the conductivity distribution is piecewise constant, takes a constant value outside a single smooth anomaly, and a frequency dependent function inside the anomaly itself. Using an original spectral decomposition of the solution of the forward conductivity problem in terms of Poincaré variational eigenelements, we retrieve the Cauchy data corresponding to the extreme case of a perfect conductor, and the conductivity profile. We then reconstruct the anomaly from the Cauchy data. The numerical experiments are conducted using gradient descent optimization algorithms.

This paper is concerned with the stability issue in determining absorption and diffusion coefficients in photoacoustic imaging. Assuming that the medium is layered and the acoustic wave speed is known, we derive global Hölder stability estimates of the photoacoustic inversion. These results show that the reconstruction is stable in the region close to the optical illumination source, and deteriorate exponentially far away. Several experimental pointed out that the resolution depth of the photoacoustic modality is about tens of millimeters. Our stability estimates confirm these observations and give a rigorous quantification of this depth resolution.

The subject of the present paper is the derivation and analysis of mathematical models for the formation of a mushy region during calcium carbonate corrosion. More specifically there is emphasis on the variation of the overall diffusion resulting from the changing shape of a single pore due to corrosion process and on the resulting volume expansion of the material as the outcome of the transformation of calcium carbonate to gypsum. These models are derived by averaging, with the use of the multiple scales method applied on microscopic moving-boundary problems. The latter problems describe the transformation of calcium carbonate into gypsum in the microscopic scale. The derived macroscopic models are solved numerically with the use of an implicit in time, finite element method. The results of the simulations for various microstructure geometries in the micro-scale and a discussion are also presented.

Ion flow in charged nanopores is strongly influenced by the ratio of the Debye length to the pore radius. We investigate the asymptotic behaviour of solutions to the Poisson–Nernst–Planck (PNP) system in narrow pore like geometries and study the influence of the pore geometry and surface charge on ion transport. The physical properties of real pores motivate the investigation of distinguished asymptotic limits, in which either the Debye length and pore radius are comparable or the pore length is very much greater than its radius This results in a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) PNP model, which can be further simplified, in the physically relevant limit of strong pore wall surface charge, to a fully 1D model. Favourable comparison is made to the two-dimensional (2D) PNP equations in typical pore geometries. It is also shown that, for physically realistic parameters, the standard 1D area averaged PNP model for ion flow through a pore is a very poor approximation to the (real) 2D solution to the PNP equations. This leads us to propose that the quasi-1D PNP model derived here, whose computational cost is significantly less than 2D solution of the PNP equations, should replace the use of the 1D area averaged PNP equations as a tool to investigate ion and current flows in ion pores.

A new two-phase model for concentrated suspensions is derived that incorporates a constitutive law combining the rheology for non-Brownian suspension and granular flow. The resulting model exhibits a yield-stress behaviour for the solid phase depending on the collision pressure. This property is investigated for the simple geometry of plane Poiseuille flow, where an unyielded or jammed zone of finite width arises in the centre of the channel. For the steady states of this problem, the governing equations are reduced to a boundary value problem for a system of ordinary differential equations and the conditions for existence of solutions with jammed regions are investigated using phase-space methods. For the general time-dependent case a new drift-flux model is derived using matched asymptotic expansions that takes into account the boundary layers at the walls and the interface between the yielded and unyielded region. The drift-flux model is used to numerically study the dynamic behaviour of the suspension flow, including the appearance and evolution of an unyielded or jammed regions.