Casimir forces on a silicon micromechanical chip

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates on-chip measurement of Casimir forces between silicon components, enabling compact, integrated, and shape-tailored quantum force experiments crucial for micro- and nano-mechanical device development.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integrated chip platform with micromechanical and electrostatic components for Casimir force measurement, eliminating the need for external objects.

Findings

Successful measurement of Casimir forces on a single chip

High parallelism achieved between interacting surfaces

Potential for tailoring Casimir forces with lithographic design

Abstract

Quantum fluctuations give rise to van der Waals and Casimir forces that dominate the interaction between electrically neutral objects at sub-micron separations. Under the trend of miniaturization, such quantum electrodynamical effects are expected to play an important role in micro- and nano-mechanical devices. Nevertheless, utilization of Casimir forces on the chip level remains a major challenge because all experiments so far require an external object to be manually positioned close to the mechanical element. Here, by integrating a force-sensing micromechanical beam and an electrostatic actuator on a single chip, we demonstrate the Casimir effect between two micromachined silicon components on the same substrate. A high degree of parallelism between the two near-planar interacting surfaces can be achieved because they are defined in a single lithographic step. Apart from providing a compact platform for Casimir force measurements, this scheme also opens the possibility of tailoring the Casimir force using lithographically defined components of non-conventional shapes.