2004/01/01 by Jianping Zou, J. Zou, Z. Marcet +16 · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Diverse Musicological Studies #Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms2842
published as Nature Communications 4, 1845 (2013)
openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · arxiv created 2013/05/17 · arxiv updated 2013/05/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/17
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 force-sensing 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.