The possibility to modify the strength of the Casimir effect by tailoring the dielectric functions of the interacting surfaces is regarded as a unique opportunity in the development of micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems. In air, however, one expects that, unless noble metals are used, the electrostatic force arising from trapped charges overcomes the Casimir attraction, leaving no room for exploitation of Casimir force engineering at ambient conditions. Here we show that, in the presence of a conductive oxide, the Casimir force can be the dominant interaction even in air, and that the use of conductive oxides allows one to reduce the Casimir force up to a factor of 2 when compared to noble metals.

In a recent paper (Phys. Rev. A78, 020101(R) (2008)

We present a new technique for the fabrication of arbitrary photolithography patterns on the cleaved facet of an optical fibre. The fibre, coated with photoresist, is aligned and brought into contact with the lithography mask, which is directly fabricated on the cleaved facet of an ultraviolet multimode fibre. To transfer the pattern, it is then sufficient to shine light from the opposite side of the ultraviolet fibre and develop the photoresist according to standard photolithography processing. Since the alignment and the movement to contact can be performed by means of image-based active fibre alignment processes used in a commercially available optical fibre splicing machine, this technique adapts well to series production.

We present a new fabrication method to carve fiber-top cantilevers from single-mode optical fibers. The procedure, which is entirely based on a two-step femtosecond laser micromachining technique, is faster and more convenient with respect to what has been reported so far in the literature, and should be well adaptable to automatization and, thus, to series production.

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