Repulsion of polarised particles from anisotropic materials with a near-zero permittivity component

Reduction of adhesion and stiction is crucial for robust operation on nanomechanical and optofluidic devices as well as atom and molecule behaviour near surfaces. It can be achieved using electric charging, magnetic materials or light pressure and optical trapping. Here we show that a particle scattering or emitting in close proximity to an anisotropic substrate can experience a repulsive force if one of the diagonal components of the permittivity tensor is close to zero. We derive an analytic condition for the existence of such repulsive force depending on the optical properties of the substrate. We also demonstrate the effect using realistic anisotropic metamaterial implementations of a substrate. The anisotropic metamaterial approach using metal-dielectric and graphene-dielectric multilayers provides a tuneable spectral range and a very broad bandwidth of electromagnetic repulsion forces, in contrast to isotropic substrates.