The Casimir force between two surfaces is attractive in most cases. Although stable suspension of nano-objects has been achieved, the sophisticated geometries make them difficult to be merged with well-established thin film processes. We find that by introducing thin film surface coating on porous substrates, a repulsive to attractive force transition is achieved when the separations are increased in planar geometries, resulting in a stable suspension of two surfaces near the force transition separation. Both the magnitude of the force and the transition distance can be flexibly tailored though modifying the properties of the considered materials, that is, thin film thickness, doping concentration, and porosity. This stable suspension can be used to design new nanodevices with ultralow friction. Moreover, it might be convenient to merge this thin film coating approach with micro-and nanofabrication processes in the future. If the distance of two neutral objects is very close (typically nanoscale), the Casimir force, which arises from quantum fluctuations, becomes dominant and increases rapidly as the distance decreases. The force is generally attractive in configurations with vacuum separated dielectrics or metallic objects. By properly choosing the materials, such as magnetic compounds [1], fluid-separated dielectrics [2], or topological insulators [3], the force can, however, turn out to be repulsive. Although the fundamental theory of Casimir force has been well studied, tuning this force for potential technology applications is still in its infancy and has recently attracted considerable attention. As microelectromechanical systems [4,5] evolve into nanoelectromechanical systems, the attractive Casimir stiction phenomenon becomes important and has to be faced. On the other hand, such phenomena may also be of significant interest when designing new nanodevices, such as the Casimir anharmonic oscillator [6,7] or the ultrasensitive sensor [8]. Several interesting works have appeared regarding the use of repulsive Casimir force to achieve stable levitation of nano-objects, such as cylinder in cylinder [9], sphere on surface [10], or rotated hockey pucks [11]. Most of them are, however, achieved in sophisticated geometries that are difficult to fabricate using well-established micro-and nanofabrication technologies. In this work, we demonstrate by means of multilayer modeling that the Casimir induced quantum levitation can be achieved in traditional planar geometry containing nanosheets. Moreover, this configuration could be further extended to thin film cladding on a mesoporous substrate without destroying the quantum levitation. Remarkably, both the magnitude of the force and the levitation distance are tunable through modifying the properties of the involved materials, that is, the thickness of the film, the doping concentration, and the porosity.In this Rapid Communication we consider a configuration of four layers, labeled as m, j , s, and l. The retarded Casimir force acting on layer j per unit area include...
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