Funding
EMP is funded through the Horizon2020 programme of the European Commission.
Selected Publications

Slippage and Boundary Layer Probed in an Almost Ideal Gas by a Nanomechanical Oscillator

M. Defoort, K. J. Lulla, T. Crozes, O. Maillet, O. Bourgeois, and E. Collin

We measure the interaction between He4 gas at 4.2 K and a high-quality nanoelectromechanical string device for its first three symmetric modes (resonating at 2.2, 6.7, and 11 MHz with quality factor Q > 0.1 × 106)Q>0.1×10over almost 6 orders of magnitude in pressure. This fluid can be viewed as the best experimental implementation of an almost ideal monoatomic and inert gas of which properties are tabulated. The experiment ranges from high pressure where the flow is of laminar Stokes-type presenting slippage down to very low pressures where the flow is molecular. In the molecular regime, when the mean-free path is of the order of the distance between the suspended nanomechanical probe and the bottom of the trench, we resolve for the first time the signature of the boundary (Knudsen) layer onto the measured dissipation. Our results are discussed in the framework of the most recent theories investigating boundary effects in fluids (both analytic approaches and direct simulation Monte Carlo methods).


Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 136101 (2014)

doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.136101