Effect of contact deformations on the adhesion of particles

http://cds.cern.ch/record/503806/files/0106045.pdf

New developments in the Casimir effect

Publisher Summary The van der Waals forces refer to the attractive forces acting between any two neutral atoms or molecules that are separated by distance large compared to their own dimensions. These forces are of a long-range nature, which decrease with distance according to a power law. The basic idea of the theory is that the interaction between the bodies is considered to take place through a fluctuating electromagnetic field. This field is always present in the interior of a material medium and it also extends beyond its boundaries because of the thermodynamic fluctuations. Any change in the electrical proper ties of the medium in a certain region will, by Maxwell's equations, lead to a change in the fluctuation field that extends beyond that region. Therefore, the part of the free energy that is related to electromagnetic fluctuations is not determined by the properties of the substance solely at the point considered.

The general theory of van der Waals forces

On Hamaker constants: A comparison between Hamaker constants and Lifshitz-van der Waals constants

A direct measurement has been made of the forces in air between two cylindrical sheets of mica arranged with their axes mutually at right angles. The contact resembles that between a sphere and a flat. The mica sheets are glued to glass formers, their concave face being first slightly silvered. The contact region and the distance of approach are measured by multiple beam interferometry using fringes of equal chromatic order (f. e. c. o.). This gives an accuracy for the distances between the surfaces of ± 0.3 nm. Since the surfaces are molecularly smooth it is possible to bring them very close to one another. One surface is held on a rigid support, the other on a light cantilever beam. The surfaces are slowly brought together and at a critical separation ‘flick’ together. The ‘flick’ distance depends on the stiffness of the cantilever and this in turn provides a direct measure of the surface forces. By using cantilevers of different stiffnesses the method has proved effective for separations ranging from 5 to 30 nm. The results show that for separations less than about 10 nm the forces operating are ‘normal’ van der Waals forces whilst for distances greater than 20 nm they are ‘retarded’ van der Waals forces.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2416454.pdf

The Direct Measurement of Normal and Retarded van der Waals Forces

Direct measurement of molecular attraction between solids separated by a narrow gap

From the Editorial Board. As a contribution to commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Evgenii Mikhailovich Lifshitz, it was found appropriate by the Editorial Board of Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk (UFN) [Physics-Uspekhi] journal that the materials of the jubilee-associated Scientific Session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences published in this issue (pp. 877-905) be augmented by the review paper "Molecular attraction of condensed bodies" reproduced from a 1958 UFN issue. Included in this review, in addition to an account by Evgenii Mikhailovich Lifshitz of his theory of molecular attractive forces between condensed bodies (first published in Zhurnal Eksperimental'noi i Teoreticheskoi Fiziki (ZhETF) in 1955 and in its English translation Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (JETP) in 1956), is a summary of a series of experimental studies beginning in 1949 by Irina Igorevna Abrikosova at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in a laboratory led by Boris Vladimirovich Derjaguin (1902-1994), a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1958, however, UFN was not yet available in English translation, so the material of the review is insufficiently accessible to the present-day English-speaking reader. This is the reason why the UFN Editorial Board decided to contribute to celebrating the 100th anniversary of E M Lifshitz's birthday by reproducing on the journal's pages a 1958 review paper which contains both E M Lifshitz's theory itself and the experimental data that underpinned it (for an account of how Evgenii Mikhailovich Lifshitz was enlisted to explain the experimental results of I I Abrikosova and B V Derjaguin, see the letter to the editors N P Danilova on page 925 of this jubilee collection of publications).

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3367/UFNe.0185.201509i.0981/pdf

E. M. Lifshitz

Papers

Direct measurement of molecular attraction between solids separated by a narrow gap

Molecular attraction of condensed bodies

Direct measurement of molecular attraction between solids separated by a narrow gap