van der Waals interaction between a microparticle and a single-walled carbon nanotube

Abstract

The Lifshitz-type formulas describing the free energy and the force of the van der Waals interaction between an atom ͑molecule͒ and a single-walled carbon nanotube are obtained. The single-walled nanotube is considered as a cylindrical sheet carrying a two-dimensional free-electron gas with appropriate boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field. The obtained formulas are used to calculate the van der Waals free energy and force between a hydrogen atom ͑molecule͒ and single-walled carbon nanotubes of different radii. Comparison studies of the van der Waals interaction of hydrogen atoms with single-walled and multiwalled carbon nanotubes show that depending on atom-nanotube separation distance, the idealization of graphite dielectric permittivity is already applicable to nanotubes with only two or three walls.

Van Der Waals and Casimir Interactions of Some Graphene, Material Plate and CNTs Systems

“…Now we specify the reflection coefficients. Let a semispace made of isotropic material (labeled by upper index 2) and be describled by the dielectric by the dielectric permittivity ε (ω).In this case the reflection coefficients are [1,4,10] r (2)…”

“…The sheet is characterized by some typical wave number Ω determined by the parameters of the hexagonal structure of graphite. In Refs [1,2,3,4,10] the interaction of the electromagnetic oscillations with such sheet was condidered and the normal modes and reflection coefficients were found. The Lifshitz formula for interaction of Au plate and graphene is obtained.…”

“…In the present paper, we use the description of graphene in terms of the two dimensional free electron gas [1,4] in order to extend the Lifshitz theory of the dispersion interaction to the case of carbon systems. Graphene is considered as an infinitely thin positively charged flat sheet, carrying a contunuous fluid with some mass and negative charge densities.…”

“…In Ref. [1,4] the Lifshitz formulas were obtained for the dispersion interaction between graphene and a material plate. The Lifshitz theory presents an considerable opportunity for extensive studies of Casimir force.…”

How to modify the van der Waals and Casimir forces without change of the dielectric permittivity

“…The distance range of dispersion forces extends from several angströms to a few nanometers (the van der Waals regime where the relativistic retardation is not important) and from a few nanometers to a few micrometers (the Casimir regime where the retardation effects contribute more and more as the separation distance increases). The diverse applications of dispersion forces vary from the physics of surface and nanostructures [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] to obtaining constraints on the predictions of unification theories of fundamental interactions beyond the Standard Model [11,12,13].…”