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Updated: Jul 22, 2026

Quantitative and Qualitative Examination of Particle-particle Interactions Using Colloidal Probe Nanoscopy
Published on: July 18, 2014
van der Waals interactions across stratified media
1Laboratory of Physical and Structural Biology, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-0924, USA. rudi@helix.nih.gov
Abstract:
Working at the Lifshitz level, we investigate the van der Waals interactions across a series of layers with a periodic motif. We derive the complete form of the van der Waals interaction as an explicit function of the number of periodic layers. We then compare our result with an approximation based on an anisotropic-continuum representation of the stratified medium. Satisfactory agreement between discrete-layer and continuum models is reached only for thicknesses of ten or more layers.
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