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Casimir force and Nano

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Mark Schlegel

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Apr 1, 1997, 3:00:00 AM4/1/97
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are there any NT design ideas that use Casimir force to
drive nanotech components? This is the force predicted
by QED theory from two conducting plates close together
restricting the number of available vacuum state modes
for EM. For the separations common in NT, the effect
would be pretty strong, but unfortunately it's proportional
to the plate area which would be tiny.

Mark


Wayne Shanks

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Apr 2, 1997, 3:00:00 AM4/2/97
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Mark Schlegel wrote:
>
> are there any NT design ideas that use Casimir force to
> drive nanotech components?


I have not seen any proposals...the closest clasical analog of the
Casimir effect is the VanDerWalls force..unfortunately both are
conservative fields and no work can be extracted from them that was not
already present in the separation of components. The Casimir and
VanDerWalls potential put together are well below thermal, and chemical
energies.

Wayne Shanks

Gordon D. Pusch

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Apr 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM4/8/97
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The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted as well.

In article <5hrbad$b...@foglet.rutgers.edu> schl...@crocker.com
(Mark Schlegel) writes:

> are there any NT design ideas that use Casimir force to

> drive nanotech components? This is the force predicted
> by QED theory from two conducting plates close together
> restricting the number of available vacuum state modes
> for EM. For the separations common in NT, the effect
> would be pretty strong, but unfortunately it's proportional
> to the plate area which would be tiny.

The ``Casimir effect'' is often presented as some mysterious
consequence of QED; however, the reality is far more mundane...

I'd have to go digging to find the reference, but in the late 1980's,
an =EXCELLENT= paper on the Casimir effect, including a more physically
realistic of molecular discreteness and EM dispersion-relation effects
(as opposed to Casimir's ``perfectly conducting homogenous plates'')
showed that the ``Casimir effect'' is merely the bulk-matter limit of
the well known >>van der Waals force<< between molecules --- there's
nothing =fundamentally= mysterious or ``vacuum-ish'' about it at all... :-/


-- Gordon D. Pusch <pu...@mcs.anl.gov>

Disclaimer: I'm a consultant --- I don't speak for ANL or the DOE,
and they *certainly* don't speak for =ME= !!!


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