not to be a party pooper, but as far as I know the casimir force is essentially the van der waals force. The way I understand it is that the vacuum energy method used to calculate the force on the plates is not correct, however it seems to be an approximation of the underlying driver of this effect which is the van der waals force.

Here is a publications in Physics letter that outlines the idea.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04143

It's likely a light read for a physicist but a though one for a well read electrical engineer (me) but once again, I'm not a physicist so take it with a grain of salt.