Design of a MEMS sensor to detect the Casimir force

Author

Yamarthy, Chakravarthy ; McNamara, Shamus

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Louisville, Louisville, KY

fYear

2009

fDate

5-8 Jan. 2009

Firstpage

645

Lastpage

648

Abstract

A single chip MEMS sensor was designed for detecting the Casimir force using parallel plate geometry. The design methodology is aimed at maintaining the parallelism between the Casimir force boundaries. The Casimir force can be estimated from the measurable capacitance shift produced by the moveable boundary. The signal to noise ratio has been calculated to be in excess of 100 without averaging due to the low thermal noise associated with the chip design and the 10aF resolution of the measurement system. The sensor is testable in air and provides a platform for measuring the Casimir force between different materials.

Keywords

Casimir effect; capacitive sensors; measurement systems; microfabrication; microsensors; thermal noise; Casimir force boundaries; Casimir force detection; MEMS sensor design; capacitance shift; capacitive sensing; measurement system; microfabrication; parallel plate geometry; thermal noise; Capacitance measurement; Chip scale packaging; Design methodology; Force measurement; Geometry; Micromechanical devices; Noise measurement; Semiconductor device measurement; Signal resolution; Signal to noise ratio; Casimir force; MEMS; capacitive sensing; microfabricated; parallel plate geometry;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems, 2009. NEMS 2009. 4th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Shenzhen

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4629-2

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4630-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NEMS.2009.5068663

Filename

5068663