Casimir forces on a silicon micromechanical chip

Abstract

Quantum fluctuations give rise to van der Waals and Casimir forces that dominate the interaction between electrically neutral objects at sub-micron separations. Under the trend of miniaturization, such quantum electrodynamical effects are expected to play an important role in micro-and nano-mechanical devices. Nevertheless, utilization of Casimir forces on the chip level remains a major challenge because all experiments so far require an external object to be manually positioned close to the mechanical element. Here by integrating a forcesensing micromechanical beam and an electrostatic actuator on a single chip, we demonstrate the Casimir effect between two micromachined silicon components on the same substrate. A high degree of parallelism between the two near-planar interacting surfaces can be achieved because they are defined in a single lithographic step. Apart from providing a compact platform for Casimir force measurements, this scheme also opens the possibility of tailoring the Casimir force using lithographically defined components of non-conventional shapes.

Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium between dielectric gratings

“…This feature is indeed promising for the experimental observation of a repulsive force. Moreover, our results can be relevant in the context of force manipulations on micromechanical systems [42]. Finally, an extension of this study to three-body configurations is also promising toward the manipulation of heat transfer [27,48].…”

“…In particular we consider a system made of two different gratings having different temperatures, immersed in an environmental bath at a third temperature. Our calculations can be relevant both to imagine new experiments measuring the Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium and in the more general context of the manipulation of the force in micro-and nanoelectromechanical systems [41,42].…”

Casimir free energy of dielectric films: classical limit, low-temperature behavior and control

“…They are responsible for interaction of electrically neutral, but polarizable, particles with material surfaces [7,8,9,10], find applications in nanoscience [11,12,13,14], play important role in many effects of condensed matter physics [15,16,17,18,19,20], and are even used in elementary particle physics for constraining some theoretical predictions beyond the standard model [21,22,23].…”

Design of a Casimir-driven parametric amplifier

“…Given the crystalline nature of both the gold on the torsional resonator and the gold sphere, patch potentials and finite conductivity effects will likely further limit gain and sensitivity and alter the V 0c 10 dependence. The patch potentials can be measured and nulled by minimizing the electrostatic force acting on the resonator [18,29]; calculations for plate-sphere geometries are given by [45]. In practice this may lead to a separation-dependent correction potential that must be added dynamically to the gold sphere via the cantilever.…”