The Casimir attraction can significantly interfere the physical response of nanoactuators. The intensity of the Casimir force depends on the geometries of interacting bodies. The present paper is dedicated to model the influence of the Casimir attraction on the electrostatic stability of nanoactuators made of cylindrical conductive nanowire/nanotube. An asymptotic solution, based on path-integr...

The Casimir force is the attraction between uncharged metallic surfaces as a result of quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. We demonstrate the Casimir effect in microelectromechanical systems using a micromachined torsional device. Attraction between a polysilicon plate and a spherical metallic surface results in a torque that rotates the plate about two thin tor...

Abstract In developing micro- and nanodevices, stiction between their parts, that is, static friction preventing surfaces in contact from moving, is a well-known problem. It caused by the finite-temperature analogue of quantum electrodynamical Casimir–Lifshitz forces, which are normally attractive. Repulsive forces have been realized experimentally, but reliance on specialized materials severel...

The Casimir stress on two parallel plates in a de Sitter background corresponding to different metric signatures and cosmological constants is calculated for massless scalar fields satisfying Robin boundary conditions on the plates. Our calculation shows that for the parallel plates with false vacuum between and true vacuum outside, the total Casimir pressure leads to an attraction of the plate...

We show a simple way of deriving the Casimir Polder interaction, present some general arguments on the finiteness and sign of mutual Casimir interactions and finally we derive a simple expression for Casimir radiation from small accelerated objects. Introduction The purpose of this short paper is threefold: (a)First we show by using direct path integral techniques that the Casimir attraction[1]...

The physics of operation of nanotube NEMS devices is reviewed. Special attention is paid to non-classical effects, rarely described in MEMS analysis, such as van der Waals/Casimir interactions, quantum effects in electrostatics, atomistic parameterization of elasticity. As an example of a breakdown of a classical MEMS theory, the NEMS scaling limitation is derived in a lump model taking into ac...

We present systematic measurements of the Casimir force between a gold-coated plate and a sphere coated with a hydrogen-switchable mirror. Hydrogen-switchable mirrors are shiny metals that can become transparent upon hydrogenation. Despite such a dramatic change of the optical properties of the sphere, we did not observe any significant decrease of the Casimir force after filling the experiment...

Within the framework of the Drude dispersive model, we predict an unusual nonmonotonic temperature dependence of the Casimir force for thin metal films. For certain conditions, this force decreases with temperature due to the decrease of the metallic conductivity, whereas the force increases at high temperatures due to the increase of the thermal radiation pressure. We consider the attraction o...

The Casimir force between metallic plates made of realistic materials is evaluated for distances in the nanometer range. A spectrum over real frequencies is introduced and shows narrow peaks due to surface resonances (plasmon polaritons or phonon polaritons) that are coupled across the vacuum gap. We demonstrate that the Casimir force originates from the attraction (repulsion) due to the corres...

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...