Electrically switchable Casimir forces using transparent conductive oxides

Nanoscale Transparent Conductive Oxides

Halving the Casimir force with conductive oxides.

The possibility to modify the strength of the Casimir effect by tailoring the dielectric functions of the interacting surfaces is regarded as a unique opportunity in the development of micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems. In air, however, one expects that, unless noble metals are used, the electrostatic force arising from trapped charges overcomes the Casimir attraction, leaving no room fo...

High mobility annealing of Transparent Conductive Oxides

To improve electrical properties a high temperature annealing treatment was applied to several transparent conductive oxides (TCO), namely tin doped indium oxide (ITO), Gaor Aldoped ZnO (ZnO:Al/Ga), ion beam assisted deposited (IBAD) ZnO:Ga and Ga doped zinc magnesium oxide (ZnMgO:Ga). All these films were grown by magnetron sputtering. During the annealing process all TCO films were capped wit...

Halving the Casimir force with conductive oxides: Experimental details

This work is an extended version of a paper published previously [S. de Man et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 040402 (2009)], where we presented measurements of the Casimir force between a gold-coated sphere and a plate coated with either gold or an indium tin oxide (I TO) layer. The experiment, which was performed in air, showed that I TO conducts sufficiently to prevent charge accumulation but is...

Strong excitonic effects in CuAlO2 delafossite transparent conductive oxides

Robert Laskowski,1 Niels Egede Christensen,2 Peter Blaha,1 and Balan Palanivel3 1Institute of Materials Chemistry, Technische Universität Wien, Getreidemarkt 9/165TC, A-1060 Vienna, Austria 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark 3Department of Physics, Pondicherry Engineering College, Puducherry 605 014, India Received 15 January 2009; revised manu...