The origins of the Casimir effect have been explored and nothingness has turned into a great deal of something. The effect of the vacuum field is to attractive or repulse, for our purposes, parallel metal plates. The physical nature of the vacuum field has allowed an alternate view of stimulated emission and spontaneous emission. Futher since the force depends very strongly on the distance between the object in question, it can affect nano or micro scale systems. For a silicon membrane, it can be deflected by the Casimir force and fabrication of these MEMS systems should take into account for the stable and unstable conditions of the membrane under the influence of the Casimir effect.
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