Casimir forces on a silicon micromechanical chip

• Main Authors: Zou, J. (Author), Marcet, Z. (Author), Kravchenko, I. I. (Author), Lu, T. (Author), Bao, Y. (Author), Chan, H. B. (Author), Rodriguez, Alejandro (Contributor), Reid, McMahon Thomas Homer (Contributor), McCauley, Alexander Patrick (Contributor), Johnson, Steven G (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group, 2016-11-18T18:08:47Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 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.