Casimir torques and lateral forces: influence of optical properties and surface morphology

We have accomplished the investigation that how self-affine roughness can affect the lateral Casimir force and Casimir torque using the pair wise summation method under appropriate conditions. The results show that this effect is significant, enabling one to tailor roughness parameters in order to obtain the desirable Casimir force, and increase the yield of micro or nano-electromechanical devices. The knowledge of Casimir and electrostatic forces between interacting materials is not only important from a fundamental point of view, but also these forces playing a crucial role for the performance and stability of microelectromechanical systems. In these devices the presence of chaotic behavior, which is often unavoidable, leads to device malfunction due to stiction, and practically it could make impossible to predict whether stiction or stable actuation will occur on a long term basis. We have done research of how the optical properties of different materials and different values of applying voltages influence the chaotic behavior of electrostatic torsional microelectromechanical systems due to changes in the magnitude of the Casimir forces and torques.