The Casimir effect between micromechanical components on a silicon chip

Author

Chan, H.B. ; Zou, Jingxin ; Marcet, Z. ; Rodriguez, Alejandro W. ; Reid, M. T. Homer ; McCauley, A.P. ; Kravchenko, I.I.I. ; Lu, Ting ; Bao, Y. ; Johnson, Steven G.

Author_Institution

Hong Kong Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Hong Kong, China

fYear

2014

fDate

17-21 Aug. 2014

Firstpage

61

Lastpage

62

Abstract

The Casimir force originates from quantum fluctuations. While this force is too weak to have any measurable effects between objects at separations larger than ~10 μm it dominates the interaction between electrically neutral surfaces at the nanoscale. By fabricating a doubly clamped microbeam for sensing the force and a comb actuator to control the distance, we demonstrate that the Casimir force can become the dominant interaction between components within the same silicon chip.

Keywords

Casimir effect; fluctuations; micro-optomechanical devices; silicon; Casimir effect; Si; comb actuator; doubly clamped microbeam; micromechanical components; quantum fluctuations; silicon chip; Actuators; Casimir effect; Electrodes; Fluctuations; Force; Silicon; Casimir forces; force sensors; quantum fluctuations; surface interactions;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN), 2014 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Glasgow

ISSN

2160-5033

Print_ISBN

978-0-9928-4140-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/OMN.2014.6924543

Filename

6924543