Intermolecular Casimir-Polder forces in water and near surfaces

Priyadarshini Thiyam; Clas Persson; Bo E Sernelius; Drew F Parsons; Anders Malthe-Sørenssen; Mathias Boström

doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.90.032122

Intermolecular Casimir-Polder forces in water and near surfaces

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2014 Sep;90(3):032122. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.90.032122. Epub 2014 Sep 18.

Authors

Priyadarshini Thiyam¹, Clas Persson², Bo E Sernelius³, Drew F Parsons⁴, Anders Malthe-Sørenssen⁵, Mathias Boström⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden and Department of Physics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway and Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway.
³ Division of Theory and Modeling, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden.
⁴ Department of Applied Mathematics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
⁵ Department of Physics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden and Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway and Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway.

PMID: 25314410
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.90.032122

Abstract

The Casimir-Polder force is an important long-range interaction involved in adsorption and desorption of molecules in fluids. We explore Casimir-Polder interactions between methane molecules in water, and between a molecule in water near SiO(2) and hexane surfaces. Inclusion of the finite molecular size in the expression for the Casimir-Polder energy leads to estimates of the dispersion contribution to the binding energies between molecules and between one molecule and a planar surface.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adsorption
Hexanes / chemistry
Methane / chemistry
Models, Theoretical
Silicon Dioxide / chemistry
Surface Properties
Water / chemistry*

Substances

Hexanes
Water
Silicon Dioxide
Methane