Quantum Mechanical Actuation of Microelectromechanical Systems by the Casimir Force

Chan, H. B.; Aksyuk, Vladimir A.; Bishop, David J.; Capasso, Federico

doi:10.1126/science.1057984

Cited by 867 publications

(793 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…Most present day nanomechanical devices are based on thin cantilever beams above a silicon substrate fabricated by photolithography followed by dry and wet chemical etching [310,311,[322][323][324]. Such cantilevers are usually suspended about 100 nm above the silicon substrate [323,324].…”

Section: Appendix a Applications Of The Casimir Force In Nanotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The important role of the Casimir forces in both the device performance and device fabrication have been acknowledged. Very recently, even an actuator based on the Casimir force has been fabricated using silicon nanofabrication technology [322].…”

Section: Appendix a Applications Of The Casimir Force In Nanotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is a silicon based device that provides mechanical motion as a result of controlling vacuum fluctuations [322]. The device is fabricated by standard nanofabrication techniques such as photolithography and chemical etching on a silicon substrate.…”

Section: Appendix a Applications Of The Casimir Force In Nanotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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New developments in the Casimir effect

2001

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We provide a review of both new experimental and theoretical developments in the Casimir effect. The Casimir effect results from the alteration by the boundaries of the zero-point electromagnetic energy. Unique to the Casimir force is its strong dependence on shape, switching from attractive to repulsive as function of the size, geometry and topology of the boundary. Thus the Casimir force is a direct manifestation of the boundary dependence of quantum vacuum. We discuss in depth the general structure of the infinities in the field theory which are removed by a combination of zeta-functional regularization and heat kernel expansion. Different representations for the regularized vacuum energy are given. The Casimir energies and forces in a number of configurations of interest to applications are calculated. We stress the development of the Casimir force for real media including effects of nonzero temperature, finite conductivity of the boundary metal and surface roughness. Also the combined effect of these important factors is investigated in detail on the basis of condensed matter physics and quantum field theory at nonzero temperature. The experiments on measuring the Casimir force are also reviewed, starting first with the older measurements and finishing with a detailed presentation of modern precision experiments. The latter are accurately compared with the theoretical results for real media. At the end of the review we provide the most recent constraints on the corrections to Newtonian gravitational law and other hypothetical long-range interactions at submillimeter range obtained from the Casimir force measurements.

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Section: Appendix a Applications Of The Casimir Force In Nanotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Appendix a Applications Of The Casimir Force In Nanotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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New developments in the Casimir effect

2001

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“…Since then, many experimental investigations have measured the Casimir force for systems with different shapes and boundary conditions [37][38][39][40][41][42]. Recently, it has been shown that the Casimir force can be utilized in the design of noncontact wear-proof parts of MEMS and NEMS [43][44][45][46][47].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An investigation of the Casimir energy for a fermion coupled to the sine-Gordon soliton with parity decomposition

2014

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We consider a fermion chirally coupled to a prescribed pseudoscalar field in the form of the soliton of the sine-Gordon model and calculate and investigate the Casimir energy and all of the relevant quantities, i.e. the spectrum of the states and the phase shifts, for each parity channel, separately. We present and use a simple prescription to construct the simultaneous eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and parity in the continua from the scattering states. We also use a prescription we had introduced earlier to calculate unique expressions for the phase shifts and check their consistency with both the weak and the strong forms of the Levinson theorem. In the graphs of the total and parity decomposed Casimir energies as a function of the parameters of the pseudoscalar field distinctive deformations appear whenever a fermionic bound state energy level with definite parity crosses the line of zero energy. However, the latter graphs show considerable sensitivity to the fine details of the shape of the background field which cannot be seen from the graph of the total Casimir energy. Finally, we consider a system consisting of a valence fermion in the ground state and find that the most energetically favorable configuration is the one with a soliton of winding number one, and this conclusion does not hold for each parity, separately.

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“…As such, they are favorable candidates for the detection of a single molecule, which would require a mass sensitivity in the range of zeptogram to attogram (10 À21 -10 À18 g), 2 NEMSs have a strong potential in a wide range of applications, such as in force sensing 3 and mass resonator, 2,4 as well as in the study of quantum vibration 5 and other fundamental physical phenomena. 6 To achieve ultra-high mass sensitivity, various low dimensional structures 2,[7][8][9][10][11][12] have been subjected to detailed investigations. Among them, freestanding nanowires have attracted much attention since they would naturally work in the single-clamped mode with minimal energy loss.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Platinum composite nanowires for ultrasensitive mass detection

Hao

Shen

et al. 2017

Applied Physics Letters

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Platinum (Pt) composite nanowires were grown on the tip of tungsten (W) microprobes by focused-electron-beam induced chemical vapor deposition (FEB-CVD). An electrical field was used to drive a transversal mechanical vibration of the nanowires. Such nanowire vibrations were found to display the first and second harmonic resonances with frequencies in the range of tens of MHz. The Young's modulus of the nanowires was estimated to be in the range of (1.4 ± 0.1) × 102 GPa to (4.7 ± 0.2) × 102 GPa, dependent on the wire size. A mass responsivity of 2.1 × 1021 Hz/kg was demonstrated with the minimum detectable mass of about 0.4 attogram. Our results indicated the potentials of FEB-CVD for the fabrication of nano-balances on any surface for ultra-sensitive mechanical applications.

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Quantum Mechanical Actuation of Microelectromechanical Systems by the Casimir Force

Cited by 867 publications

References 26 publications

New developments in the Casimir effect

New developments in the Casimir effect

An investigation of the Casimir energy for a fermion coupled to the sine-Gordon soliton with parity decomposition

Platinum composite nanowires for ultrasensitive mass detection

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