Tailoring the thermal Casimir force with graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the thermal Casimir force between graphene and a metal can be significantly tuned by adjusting temperature and Fermi level, especially at nanometer-scale separations, with potential for technological applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to tailor the thermal Casimir force using graphene's electronic properties, achieving high force contrast at small separations.

Findings

Force varies significantly with Fermi level and temperature.

Force measurable in the 50-300 nm range.

Graphene on dielectric membrane offers a robust configuration.

Abstract

The Casimir interaction is omnipresent source of forces at small separations between bodies, which is difficult to change by varying external conditions. Here we show that graphene interacting with a metal can have the best known force contrast to the temperature and the Fermi level variations. In the distance range 50-300 nm the force is measurable and can vary a few times for graphene with a bandgap much larger than the temperature. In this distance range the main part of the force is due to the thermal fluctuations. We discuss also graphene on a dielectric membrane as a technologically robust configuration.