Reduction of the Casimir force using aerogels

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates numerically that silicon oxide aerogels can significantly reduce the Casimir force, potentially making it negligible in nanodevices, with porosity and thickness as key control parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical model showing how aerogel porosity and thickness can be used to effectively diminish the Casimir force in nanotechnology applications.

Findings

Casimir force can be reduced by several orders of magnitude using aerogels.

Porosity and thickness of aerogels are effective control parameters.

Reduction persists even on metallic substrates.

Abstract

By using silicon oxide based aerogels we show numerically that the Casimir force can be reduced several orders of magnitude, making its effect negligible in nanodevices. This decrease in the Casimir force is also present even when the aerogels are deposited on metallic substrates. To calculate the Casimir force we model the dielectric function of silicon oxide aerogels using an effective medium dielectric function such as the Clausius-Mossotti approximation. The results show that both the porosity of the aerogel and its thickness can be use as control parameters to reduce the magnitude of the Casimir force.