Towards measurement of the Casimir force between parallel plates separated at sub-micron distance

Ever since its prediction, experimental investigation of the Casimir force has been of great scientific interest. Many research groups have successfully attempted quantifying the force with different device geometries; however measurement of the Casimir force between parallel plates with sub-micron separation distance is still a demanding task, since it becomes extremely difficult to maintain sufficient parallelism between the plates. This paper presents a MEMS chip which is realized to measure the Casimir force between two gold-coated parallel plates at sub-micron distance. The fabrication process to realize the parallel plate structures, the assembly procedure of the measurement setup and some initial characterization results are presented.