Abstract
We calculate the Casimir interaction between isotropic plates (gold or graphene) and black phosphorus (BP) sheets with Lifshitz theory. It is found that the Casimir force with BP sheets is of the order of α times the perfect metal limit, and α is the fine structure constant. Strong anisotropy of the BP conductivity gives rise to a difference in the Casimir force contribution between the two principal axis. Furthermore, increasing the doping concentration both in BP sheets and graphene sheets can enhance the Casimir force. Moreover, introducing substrate and increased temperature can also enhance the Casimir force, by this way we reveal that the Casimir interaction can be doubled. The controllable Casimir force opens a new avenue for designing next generation devices in micro- and nano-electromechanical systems.
© 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement
1. Introduction
The Casimir force is a macroscopic quantum effect due to the fluctuations of the electromagnetic field [1]. This interaction plays an important role in fabricating and operating nano- and micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS and MEMS) [2]. According to Casimir’s theory, the attractive force per unit area between two electrically neutral and perfect metals is $\frac {F_0}{A}=-\frac {\hbar c\pi ^2}{240 d^4}$[1], where the negative sign indicates attraction, $A$ is the in-plane area, $\hbar$ is the reduced Planck’s constant, $c$ is the speed of light in vacuum, and $d$ is the distance between the plates. Subsequently, the Casimir force based on isotropic two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene has been widely reported [3,4]. Drosdoff et al. found the Casimir force per unit area between pristine graphene sheet with a constant conductivity is $\frac {F_g}{A}=-\frac {3e^2}{128\pi ^2\varepsilon _0 d^4}$, which show the same distance dependence as the one for perfect metals [5]. Recently, anisotropic 2D materials, such as black phosphorus (BP) [6,7], ReS$_2$ [8,9] and TiS$_3$ [10,11] have received enormous attentions. Particularly, mono-layer or few-layer black phosphorus, showing direct bandgap, high mobility and large current on/off ratios [12], are promising 2D material for applications in optoelectronic devices [6,13]. Compared with the well-known Casimir interactions in graphene sheets [14,15] and strained graphene sheets [16,17], highly natural in-plane anisotropic is one of the most intriguing properties for BP sheets [12,18,19], which make it very interesting in nano- or micro-electromechanical systems.
In this work, we investigated the Casimir attractive force between parallel isotropic materials and anisotropic 2D sheets. Based on the fluctuation-dissipation theory, the Casimir force between isotropic thin plates (gold plates or graphene sheets) and BP sheets is calculated. We found that the Casimir interaction can be tuned by the carrier doping of BP sheets and graphene sheets. In addition, we also show that the Casimir force can be affected by ambient temperature and semi-infinite substrates.
2. Simulation and theory
The system in the study is depicted in Figs. 1(a) and 1(b), consisting of a few-layer BP sheet and a gold nanoplate with thickness $L_g$ or a single-layer graphene sheet brought into close proximity with a vacuum gap $d$. The in-plane dimension of the gold nanoplate is much larger than $L_g$ and $d$, thus it is considered as a slab during our calculations.
The Casimir free energy per unit area between two parallel flat bodies characterized by their reflection matrices $\mathbf {R}$, is defined by the Lifshitz formula [20,21]
With medium 2 being isotropic, the reflection matrix of a gold nanoplate or a graphene sheet is given by
where the reflection coefficients can be given analytically as followsThe parameters shown in Ref. [27] are fitted from the experimental data in a wide range of frequency. Moreover, the complex surface conductivity of the graphene mono-layer is governed by the Kubo formula with the random phase approximations [4,28,29]
The Casimir force per unit area between a freestanding BP sheet and a suspended gold nanoplate(BP-Gold) or a freestanding graphene nanosheet(BP-Gr), normalized by perfect metal limit, is shown in Fig. 3. Remarkably, they are of the order of $\sim 10^{-2}$ (i.e., $\sim 1/\alpha$) times perfect metal limit, where $\alpha =e^2/(4\pi \varepsilon _0c\hbar )\approx 1/137$ is the fine structure constant. It has the same order of magnitude as the Casimir force in graphene system [5]. Moreover, when the separation $d$ is larger than 50 nm, the Casimir force between the BP sheet and the gold nanoplate is about twice as much as it between the BP sheet and the graphene nanosheet.
The spectral Casimir force contribution between a BP sheet and a graphene sheet, defined as $\int d^2\mathbf {k}_{\|}\log \det [1-\mathbf {R_1}\cdot \mathbf {R_2}e^{-2\kappa _0d}]$, are shown in Fig. 4. Clearly, one can find that the contribution mainly comes from low frequency components, i.e., $\hbar \omega <0.5\,\text {eV}$. Besides, one can find that the spectra become narrower as the separation $d$ decrease. To understand the mainly contribution mechanism in Fig. 4, the contours plots of at $k$-space are shown in Fig. 5 for three different photon energies. For low photon energy $\hbar \omega =0.1\,\text {eV}$, $\varepsilon _{\text {AC}}>\varepsilon _{\text {ZZ}}$ is satisfied, the most effective coupling appears at $k_x$ axis with $k_xd\approx \pm 0.45$. For photon energy $\hbar \omega =0.382\,\text {eV}$, $\varepsilon _{\text {AC}}\approx \varepsilon _{\text {ZZ}}$, the contribution pattern is isotropic. While for photon energy $\hbar \omega =1\,\text {eV}$, $\varepsilon _{\text {AC}}<\varepsilon _{\text {ZZ}}$ is fulfilled, the most effective coupling appears at $k_y$ axis with $k_yd\approx \pm 1.14$ right now. Considering that the intensity of spectral Casimir force at low frequency is one order of magnitude higher than that of high frequency, one can conclude that the whole Casimir force contribution mainly comes from low frequency components, and the most effective coupling appears at $k_x$ direction.
The Casimir force as a function of BP concentration $n$ are shown in Fig. 6. To our surprise, the Casimir force increases as $n$ varies from $1\times 10^{12}\,\text {cm}^{-2}$ to $1\times 10^{14}\,\text {cm}^{-2}$, which show the opposite dependence with the near-field radiative heat transfer [30,31]. This may be due to the near-field radiative heat transfer is mainly originated from the surface plasmon polaritions resonance while there is no resonance in imaginary frequency space [32]. Similarly, raising the Fermi energy, i.e., increasing the doping concentration in graphene, can also enhance the Casimir force. However, the thickness of gold plates has very little impact on the Casimir force between gold plates and BP sheets.
3. Finite temperature effect
The temperature of the system needs to be considered in the actual configuration. To consider the thermal excitation in graphene and BP sheets, one can replace the E$_F$ in Eq. (6) by $2k_bT\ln [2\cosh (E_F/2k_bT)]$, and replace the doping carrier density $n$ in Eq. (4) by
4. Substrate effect
To investigate the impact of the substrate on the Casimir force between semi-infinite substrates, we consider the commonly used substrates made of Teflon. For Teflon substrate, the dielectric function is described by the Lorentz oscillator model, where eight pairs of Lorentz poles are taken into account [27,36]
The values of $C_j$ and $\omega _j$ shown in Ref. [27] are fitted from the experimental data in a wide range of frequency. Figure 8(a) shows the Casimir force between BP sheets and graphene or gold plate located on Teflon substrate. It was found that the features of Fig. 8(a) are similar to those of Fig. 3, except for the fact that Teflon substrates have enhanced the Casimir interaction. Actually, the Casimir force has almost doubled after introducing the Teflon substrate. To further study of the properties of substrate on the Casimir force, the dependence of relative Casimir force on the relative permittivity $\varepsilon$ of the substrates are shown in Fig. 8(b). One can find that the relative Casimir force monotonically increases with the increase of $\varepsilon$. When $\varepsilon$ is less than 10, the Casimir force approximately scale with $F\propto \lg (\epsilon )$, as the permittivity continues to increase, the Casimir force no longer increases significantly.
5. Conclusion
In summary, the Casimir interaction between gold plates/graphene sheets and BP sheets has been theoretically investigated using the Lifshitz theory. Our model shows that the Casimir force with BP sheet is of the order of $\alpha$ times the perfect metal limit. The contribution of the Casimir force mainly comes from low frequency components, and the most effective coupling appears at $k_x$ direction. Besides, introducing dielectric substrate and increasing temperature can also enhance the Casimir force. Moreover, active modulation of Casimir interaction can also be realized by tuning the doping concentrations in BP and graphene sheet though external gating. Our work may pave the way for applications of anisotropic 2D materials in non-contact mechanical modulators, resulting from the quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.
Appendix
When $\xi \rightarrow 0$, $\sigma _{xx},\sigma _{xy}$ and $\sigma _{yy}$ are finite, and $\lim \kappa =\lim \kappa _0=k_\parallel$. For simplify, we only consider the freestanding BP sheet, Eq. (2) can be read as
Similarly, for graphene sheets or gold plates, when $\xi \rightarrow 0$, $\lim \kappa _g=\lim \kappa _0=\lim \kappa =k_\parallel$, and $\lim \varepsilon _g=\sigma /\xi$. For suspended graphene sheets or gold plates,
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (11604282, 11604283, 61571386, 61974127); Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (232300420120); Nanhu Scholars Program for Young Scholars of Xinyang Normal University.
Disclosures
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data availability
Data underlying the results presented in this paper are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.
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