A study of the electromagnetic fluctuation induced forces on thin metallic films

Abstract

Using the plasma model for the metal dielectric function we have calculated the electromagnetic fluctuation induced forces on a free standing metallic film in vacuum as a function of the film size and the plasma frequency. The force for unit area is attractive and for a given film thickness it shows an intensity maximum at a specific plasma value, which cannot be predicted on the basis of a non retarded description of the electromagnetic interaction. If the film is deposited on a substrate or interacts with a plate, both the sign and the value of the force are modified. It is shown that the force can change sign from attraction to repulsion upon changing the substrate plasma frequency. A detailed comparison between the force on the film boundaries and the force between film and substrate indicates that, for 50-100 nm thick films, they are comparable when film-substrate distance is of the order of the film thickness.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Low-temperature behavior of the Casimir free energy and entropy of metallic films
• Casimir free energy of metallic films: Discriminating between Drude and plasma model approaches
• The van der Waals and Casimir energy of anisotropic atomically thin metallic films
• Role of vacuum fluctuation forces in thin metal film stability
• Casimir pressure on a thin metal slab
• Size quantization effects in thin film Casimir interaction