Setting Micro Gears In Motion

jim.b0b writes: "ScienceDaily has a nice article on lateral Casimir force and its possible impact on Micro Machines. 'One can envision a device fabricated with two corrugated surfaces allowing for a sliding motion between the two surfaces. The normal Casimir force would move the membrane up and down in the vertical plane, while the lateral Casimir force would slide it back and forth. Thus, on a silicon chip you can have vertical and sliding motions of a micro device.'"

Comments

This isn't electronic chips, it's physical force

[Bob_Robertson]

The application isn't in the electronics of what the author calls "silicon chips", it's the mechanical elements that have been created by using the methods of electronic chip manufacture, specifically etching and overlaying.

One question that had come to mind for me was lubrication. If you have two surfaces at any scale that are moving against each other, you will get friction.

This "force" allows for mechanical elements to interact without contact, effectively eliminating friction and wear. The scale seems too small to be directly useful for such things as disk-drive heads, but who knows?

It's an interesting exploration, but I don't expect WD-40 will lose market share to it in the near future.

Bob-