Scaling of micro- and nanodevices actuated by Casimir forces

Bárcenas, J.; Reyes, Luz M.; Esquivel‐Sirvent, R.

doi:10.1063/1.2152835

Cited by 51 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…In other way one can consider this effect by evaluating the radiation pressure on macroscopic objects [2]. As the magnitude of the Casimir force is substantial at H < 100 nm this effect is relevant in nano-technology [3][4][5][6] and should be take into account to design and actuate microelectromechanical (MEMS) systems. Moreover the possibility of transducing the energy from the vacuum is investigated by means of MEMS [8][9][10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Casimir force in the presence of a medium

2010

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In this article we investigate the Casimir effect in the presence of a medium by quantizing the Electromagnetic (EM) field in the presence of a magnetodielectric medium by using the path integral formalism. For a given medium with definite electric and magnetic susceptibilities, explicit expressions for the Casimir force are obtained which are in agree with the original Casimir force between two conducting parallel plates immersed in the quantum electromagnetic vacuum.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Casimir force in the presence of a medium

2010

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“…bodies when one of them is suspended on an elastic spring 20 . At small distances the system becomes unstable and jumps to contact [21][22][23] . Due to this instability the measurement of the force in air of vacuum at distances of the order or below 10 nm becomes cumbersome 6,24,25 .…”

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Global consequences of a local Casimir force: Adhered cantilever

Svetovoy

Melenev

Lokhanin

et al. 2017

Applied Physics Letters

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Although stiction is a cumbersome problem for microsystems, it stimulates investigations of surface adhesion. In fact, the shape of an adhered cantilever carries information of the adhesion energy that locks one end to the substrate. We demonstrate here that the system is also sensitive to the dispersion forces that are operative very close to the point of contact, but their contribution to the shape is maximum at about one third of the unadhered length. When the force exceeds a critical value the cantilever does not lose stability but it settles at smaller unadhered length, whose relation to adhesion energy is only slightly affected by the force. Our calculations suggest to use adhered cantilevers to measure the dispersion forces at short separations, where other methods suffer from jump-to-contact instability. Simultaneous measurement of the force and adhesion energy allows the separation of the dispersion contribution to the surface adhesion.The dispersion forces, a common name for the fluctuation-induced van der Waals (vdW) and Casimir forces 1,2 , become measurable with relative ease at separations less than 100nm3-6 since they have significant magnitude. However, even at these separations they are weak compared to background forces such as elastic, electrostatic, or capillary forces. Only at very small separations between bodies ∼ 1 nm do the dispersion forces dominate. The latter means that these forces play a crucial role only near or at the point of contact of two macroscopic bodies. Although it is natural to expect that these forces are not important far away from the point of contact as, for example, was formulated in the crack theory by Barenblatt 7 , there are physical situations where the finite range of the dispersion interaction plays a principal role.One example that was considered recently 8 demonstrated this effect for surface nanobubbles. These nanobubbles are gaseous domains trapped at the solidliquid interface 9,10 . They have the shape of a spherical cap with heights of ∼ 10 nm. The liquid and solid separated by a gaseous gap attract each other due to the dispersion interaction. The energy associated with this interaction at distances d ∼ 10 nm is estimated as ∼ 10 −5 J/m 2 that is much smaller than the surface tension of liquids γ ∼ 10 −2 J/m 2 . However, in the corners, where the gas-solid and gas-liquid interfaces are met, the energy is singular. The singularity is resolved due to balance of the attractive vdW and repulsive chemical interaction at distances ∼ 3Å11 . For a drop in gas or in another liquid the effect of the dispersion interaction is important only at the very corners 12 . However, for nanobubbles both the gas compressibility and a finite range of interaction influence significantly the global characteristics of the bubbles such as the aspect ratio or the contact angle Furthermore, the dispersion interaction close to the point of contact can influence the global characteristics of contacting bodies, which is a crucial issue in the fabrication and operation of micro/nano de...

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“…Devices actuated by Casimir force have been designed and demonstrated [8][9][10]. Since these forces depend upon the reflectivity, the size and the geometry of the interacting parts [11,12], several possibilities can be explored to devise structures that exploit such dependence in order to improve the performance of existing devices or to design new types of devices [13]. In this paper we investigate the possibility of using materials, that undergo fast and reversible phase transitions, to extend the travel range of a device.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For simplicity we assume that the thickness of the deposited films is larger than the distance between the plates (if the film size is comparable to the distance, the substrate is expected to affect the intensity of the force). This assumption can be removed by extending the expression of the Lifshitz force to deal with a five layer system [13,32].…”

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“…-We consider an ideal actuator [1,13] consisting of two parallel plates separated by a gap, with one plate fixed on a substrate and the other suspended by an elastic restoring force F = −Kx 0 δ, where x 0 is the unactuated distance and K is the spring constant. The stationary plate has a flat surface at δ = 1, while δ = 0 denotes the equilibrium position of the movable plate in the absence of dispersion forces and corresponds to the unstretched state of the spring.…”

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Effects of phase transitions in devices actuated by the electromagnetic vacuum force

Benassi

Calandra

2008

Europhys. Lett.

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Abstract. -We study the influence of the electromagnetic vacuum force on the behaviour of a model device based on materials, like germanium tellurides, that undergo fast and reversible metalinsulator transitions on passing from the crystalline to the amorphous phase. The calculations are performed at finite temperature and fully accounting for the behaviour of the material dielectric functions. The results show that the transition can be exploited to extend the distance and energy ranges under which the device can be operated without undergoing stiction phenomena. We discuss the approximation involved in adopting the Casimir expression in simulating nanoand micro-devices at finite temperature.Introduction. -With the development of modern technology towards smaller structures an increasing attention has been addressed to the role of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuation forces (dispersion or van der Waals and Casimir forces) in micro-and nano-electromechanical systems [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. These forces vary typically with the third or fourth inverse power of the distance between the surfaces of the interacting bodies and therefore can be very intense in the sub-micrometer regime. When the moving parts of a device come to such a close distance, dispersion forces affect the dynamics and the operation of the device and, under certain circumstances, they can cause adhesion or stiction between the surfaces, thus limiting the device lifetime. Devices actuated by Casimir force have been designed and demonstrated [8][9][10]. Since these forces depend upon the reflectivity, the size and the geometry of the interacting parts [11,12], several possibilities can be explored to devise structures that exploit such dependence in order to improve the performance of existing devices or to design new types of devices [13]. In this paper we investigate the possibility of using materials, that undergo fast and reversible phase transitions, to extend the travel range of a device. Thermally induced phase changes between the amorphous and the polycrystalline state in a thin film have been observed since a

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Scaling of micro- and nanodevices actuated by Casimir forces

Cited by 51 publications

References 19 publications

Casimir force in the presence of a medium

Casimir force in the presence of a medium

Global consequences of a local Casimir force: Adhered cantilever

Effects of phase transitions in devices actuated by the electromagnetic vacuum force

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