Abstract
In microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), parallel plate structures with sub-micron
separation have been of much use in various types of sensors and actuators. As the separation
distance in these devices reaches down to hundreds of nm, it gets difficult to control the gap
due to parasitic charging and the Casimir force. The Casimir force and its dependence on the
boundary conditions of electromagnetic fields is a phenomenon that is mostly avoided rather
than explored. In this paper, we present a methodology involving a micromachined
parallel-plate geometry to measure the Casimir force at sub-micron separation. The new
feature in this setup is the micromechanical means of parallelism control to measure the force
at extremely small separation distances. A fabrication process for the micromachined
parallel-plate structure is also given.
Original language | Undefined |
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Article number | 10.1088/0960-1317/20/6/064005 |
Pages (from-to) | 064005 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Journal of micromechanics and microengineering |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2010 |
Keywords
- METIS-270840
- IR-72136
- EWI-17970