A Materials Perspective on Casimir and Van Der Waals Interactions
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A Materials Perspective on Casimir and van der Waals Interactions 1L. M. Woods, 2D. A. R. Dalvit, 3A. Tkatchenko, 4P. Rodriguez-Lopez, 5A. W. Rodriguez, and 6;7R. Podgornik 1Department of Physics, University of South Florida, Tampa FL, 33620, USA 2Theoretical Division, MS B123, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM, 87545, USA 3Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, D-14195 Berlin, Germany 4Laboratoire de Physique Th´eorique et Mod`elesStatistiques, CNRS UMR 8626, B^at.100, Universit´eParis-Sud, 91405 Orsay cedex, France 5Princeton Univ, Dept Elect Engn, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA 6Jozef Stefan Inst, Dept Theoret Phys, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 7Univ Massachusetts, Dept Phys, Amherst, MA 01003 USA Interactions induced by electromagnetic fluctuations, such as van der Waals and Casimir forces, are of universal nature present at any length scale between any types of systems with finite dimensions. Such interactions are important not only for the fundamental science of materials behavior, but also for the design and improvement of micro- and nano-structured devices. In the past decade, many new materials have become available, which has stimulated the need of understanding their dispersive interactions. The field of van der Waals and Casimir forces has experienced an impetus in terms of developing novel theoretical and computational methods to provide new insights in related phe- nomena. The understanding of such forces has far reaching consequences as it bridges concepts in materials, atomic and molecular physics, condensed matter physics, high en- ergy physics, chemistry and biology. In this review, we summarize major breakthroughs and emphasize the common origin of van der Waals and Casimir interactions. We ex- amine progress related to novel ab initio modeling approaches and their application in various systems, interactions in materials with Dirac-like spectra, force manipulations through nontrivial boundary conditions, and applications of van der Waals forces in organic and biological matter. The outlook of the review is to give the scientific com- munity a materials perspective of van der Waals and Casimir phenomena and stimulate the development of experimental techniques and applications. PACS numbers: 34.20.Cf,78.67.Uh,81.05.ue arXiv:1509.03338v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci] 10 Sep 2015 2 I. INTRODUCTION Phenomena originating from electromagnetic fluctuations play an important role in many parts of science and technology. The Casimir effect, first predicted as an attractive force between neutral perfect metals (Casimir, 1948), has made an especially large impact. This non-classical electromagnetic force is typically associated with the coupling between objects with macroscopic dimensions. The same type of interaction known as a Casimir-Polder force concerns atom/surface configurations (Casimir and Polder, 1948). The conceptual realization of the Casimir and Casimir-Polder effects, however, is much more general. The connection of such interactions with broader definitions of "dispersion forces" establishes a close relationship with the van der Waals (vdW) force (Barton, 1999; Mahanty and Ninham, 1976; Parsegian, 2006). The common origin of vdW and Casimir interactions is directly related to their fluctuations nature, since at thermodynamic equilibrium the electromagnetic energy of dipoles (associated with the vdW force) can also be associated with the energy stored in the electromagnetic fields (the Casimir regime), as illustrated schematically in Fig. 1. The point that these constitute the same phenomenon was realized by several authors, including (Barash and Ginsburg, 1984) who write, "The fluctuation nature of the van der Waals forces for macroscopic objects is largely the same as for individual atoms and molecules. The macroscopic and microscopic aspects of the theory of the van der Waals forces are therefore intimately related." This ubiquitous force, present between any types of objects, has tremendous consequences in our understanding of interactions and stability of materials of different kinds, as well as in the operation of devices at the micro- and nano-scales. The Casimir force becomes appreciable for experimental detection at sub-micron separations. This is especially relevant for nano- and micro-mechanical devices, such as most electronic gadgets we use everyday, where stiction and adhesion appear as parasitic effects (Buks and Roukes, 2001). The Casimir force, on the other hand, can be used to actuate components of small devices without contact (Chan et al., 2001). vdW interactions are recognized to play a dominant role in the stability and functionality of materials with chem- ically inert components, especially at reduced dimensions. The most interesting recent example has been graphene and its related nanostructures (Novoselov et al., 2004). The graphene Dirac-like spectrum together with the reduced dimensionality are responsible for novel behaviors in their Casimir/vdW forces. The graphene explosion in science and technology has stimulated discoveries of other surface materials, including 2D dichalcogenides, 2D oxides or other honeycomb layers, such as silicene, germanene, or stanene, where dispersive forces are of primary importance. En- gineering heterostructures with stacking different types of layers is an emerging field with technological applications via vdW assembly (Geim and Grigorieva, 2013). Other materials with Dirac spectra are also being investigated. For example, topological insulators, Chern insulators, and Weyl semimetals are very interesting for the Casimir/vdW field as the surface of such materials has a distinct nature from the bulk. The importance of the vdW interaction extends to organic and biological matter. Perhaps the adhesion of the Gecko, a type of lizzard from the Gekkota infraorder, has become a pop-cultural poster child for such interactions after Autumn and coworkers (Autumn et al., 2002) in a series of experiments showed that complex hierarchical nano- morphology of the gecko's toe pads (Lee, 2014) allows them to adhere to hydrophobic substrates (Autumn and Peattie, 2002). Dispersion forces play an important role in the organization of other bio-systems, such as cellulose, lignin, and proteins. The stability of biological matter via an array of lipid membranes coupled through the vdW force is a fundamental problem of much current interest in soft matter physics. The stability of many hard materials, including composites and heterostructures, is also closely related to their Casimir and vdW interactions. The electromagnetic nature makes this phenomenon inherently long-ranged as it FIG. 1 (Color Online) Schematic representation of dispersive interactions induced by electromagnetic fluctuations for: (a) the dipolar vdW force between atoms and molecules; (b) the Casimir-Polder force between atoms and large objects; and (c) the Casimir force between large objects. For small enough separations one can neglect retardation effects due to the finite speed of light c, which corresponds to the vdW regime. For large enough separations, retardation effects become important, which is charactersitic for the Casimir regime. 3 depends in a complicated manner upon the electromagnetic boundary conditions and response properties of the materials. Metallic and dielectric structures of nontrivial shapes lend themselves as a platform where this aspect can be investigated in order to tailor this force in terms of its magnitude and sign. The payoff is highly beneficial in the context of being able to reduce the unwanted stiction and adhesion in nano electro-mechanical and micro electro-mechanical devices and improve their performance. Structured materials, including metamaterials, photonic crystals, and plasmonic nanostructures, on the other hand, allow the engineering of the optical density of states and magnetic response, which is also useful for manipulating the Casimir force. Research published in the past decade has shown that the role of materials can hardly be overestimated when it comes to the description and understanding of dispersive interactions. In addition to recent books discussing basic concepts (Bordag et al., 2009b; Buhmann, 2012a,b; Dalvit et al., 2011a; Parsegian, 2006; Simpson et al., 2015), there are several existing topical reviews on the Casimir effect with different emphasis. Aspects such as the quantum field theory nature (Bordag et al., 2001; Milton, 2004), the quantum electrodynamics (QED) method (Buhmann and Welsch, 2007), experimental progress (Lamoreaux, 2005), the Lifshitz theory and proximity force approximation (PFA) with related experiments (Klimchitskaya et al., 2009), and non-trivial boundary conditions (Buhmann, 2012b; Dalvit et al., 2011b; Reid et al., 2013a; Rodriguez et al., 2011a, 2014) have been summarized. Nevertheless, the materials perspective of vdW/Casimir interactions has not been considered so far. With recent advances in materials science, especially in novel low-dimensional materials, composites, and biosystems, this field has become a platform for bridging not only distance scales, but also concepts from condensed matter, high energy, and computational physics. There is an apparent need for discussing progress beyond the existing topical reviews via a materials perspective and give a broader visibility of this field. The purpose of this article is to summarize advances in the development and application of theoretical and computational techniques for the description of Casimir and vdW interactions guided and motivated by progress in materials discoveries.