Extended Data Fig. 4: Dependence of the flake height on surface treatment.
From: Tunable critical Casimir forces counteract Casimir–Lifshitz attraction
Far away from Tc, the particle height h above a gold surface is reduced to h ≈ 100 nm due to the attractive Casimir–Lifshitz force, independent of whether a SAM is present (red circles, inset with red frame) or not (yellow diamonds, inset with yellow frame). For dielectric surfaces such as silica (grey triangles, inset grey frame), the particle fluctuates at a much larger distance h ≈ 300 nm because of the substantially smaller attractive Casimir–Lifshitz force. Here, all measurements have been performed far away from criticality with ΔT≤ − 0.3 K, in a range where these results are independent of ΔT. All error bars indicated in the plot correspond to the standard deviation and amount to about 5% of the absolute value. The data are presented as mean values.
