A sufficient condition for the existence of a positive solution for a nonlinear fractional differential equation with the Riemann–Liouville derivative

In this work, by means of the fixed point theorem in a cone, we establish the existence result for a positive solution to a kind of boundary value problem for a nonlinear differential equation with a Riemann–Liouville fractional order derivative. An example illustrating our main result is given. Our results extend previous work in the area of boundary value problems of nonlinear fractional differential equations [C. Goodrich, Existence of a positive solution to a class of fractional differential equations, Appl. Math. Lett. 23 (2010) 1050–1055].