Casimir force between bimetallic heterostructures

With the recent growth of nano physics, the Casimir effect has gained more attention, and this time also on the experimental side [2–6], because it is clear that Casimir forces will have to be taken into account where micro and nanostructures are involved [7,8]. These experiments were made between a sphere and a plate, a setup that has proved more easily applicable in experiments. Recently Ianuzzi et al. [9] presented precise measurements of the Casimir force using microtorsional devices. The goals of their investigations are quite significant, for they used an exotic material (hydrogen switchable mirrors (HSM)) to probe how optical properties may change the Casimir force and thereby allow to fine-tune it, all this in sights of controlling the force in nanostructures.The results were not quite as expected (the use of HSM turned out not to modify the Casimir force significantly) although other questions arose such as the role of Pd in the Casimir attraction between HSM’s. The possible applications of the Casimir force in nanodevices depend on how the force can be modified in a given system. In previous works the magnitude of Casimir forces was altered using heterostructures and thermally activated materials. These calculations were restricted to the one-dimensional case [10, 11]. In this paper we present a calculation for the Casimir force between bimetallic superlattices in the 3D case and study the effect that Pd coatings. Our approach is based on the concept of effective surface impedance.