Can nanotechnology experimentally solve the plane-plane challenge

TL;DR

This paper proposes an innovative experimental setup combining nanopositioning and microcrystal shaping to measure interactions between parallel surfaces at micrometer and nanometer scales, addressing a longstanding challenge in precise control.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using inertial motors and FIB shaping to enable versatile measurements of non-contact interactions between flat surfaces.

Findings

Design of a new experimental setup for surface interaction measurement

Potential to improve control of parallelism in surface experiments

Enables exploration of various physical models in non-contact regimes

Abstract

Non-contact interaction between two parallel flat surfaces is a central paradigm in sciences. This situation is the starting point for a wealth of different models: the capacitor description in electrostatics, hydrodynamic flow, thermal exchange, the Casimir force, direct contact study, third body confinement such as liquids or films of soft condensed matter. The control of parallelism is so demanding that no versatile single force machine in this geometry has been proposed so far. Using a combination of nanopositioning based on inertial motors and microcrystal shaping with Focused Ion Beams (FIB) we propose here an experimental set up that should enable one to measure interactions between movable surfaces separated by gaps in the micrometer and the nanometer ranges.