  The behavior of a non-conductive quasi-planar lipid membrane in an
electrolyte and in a static (DC) electric field is investigated theoretically
in the nonlinear (Poisson-Boltzmann) regime. Electrostatic effects due to
charges in the membrane lipids and in the double layers lead to corrections to
the membrane elastic moduli which are analyzed here. We show that, especially
in the low salt limit, i) the electrostatic contribution to the membrane's
surface tension due to the Debye layers crosses over from a quadratic behavior
in the externally applied voltage to a linear voltage regime. ii) the
contribution to the membrane's bending modulus due to the Debye layers
saturates for high voltages. Nevertheless, the membrane undulation instability
due to an effectively negative surface tension as predicted by linear
Debye-H\"uckel theory is shown to persist in the nonlinear, high voltage
regime.
