Lateral Casimir force between self-affine rough surfaces

The effect of self-affine roughness on the lateral Casimir force between two plates is studied using a perturbative expansion method. The PWS (pairwise summation) method is applicable only at lateral correlation lengths much larger than the separation between two plates. The effect of the roughness parameters on the lateral Casimir force is investigated, and it is seen that this effect is significant, enabling one to tailor roughness parameters so that to obtain the desirable Casimir force and increase the yield of micro- or nano-electromechanical devices based on the vacuum fluctuations. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.