I would suggest Dewey B. Larson's Reciprocal system would be a profitable theory to investigate regarding the Casimir effect and other behaviors of systems of size about 45 nm.
It is a fundamental part of the Reciprocal System that length is quantized into units of 45.6 nm (unit length in the theory). At that length, an inversion takes place. Gravity repels below that, and the "expansion of the universe, (we'll call it the "scalar outward motion" or just "progression") attracts instead of vice-versa, in other words gravity attracts to unit length, not zero length. It is the progression balanced with gravity that account for chemical bonding and bond length. The progression is seen as a constant 15 femto G repulsive force at the macro level, and accounts for the galaxies moving away from each other and why stars won't approach closer than about 4 light years, and why globular clusters are stable spheres. I can see that the Casimir force is effective on the order of unit length. See http://www.rsystem.org http://www.rstheory.com Hoyt Stearns Jr. Scottsdale, Arizona US http://members.cox.net/hoyt-stearns
