We present a facile synthetic route to a silver bowl-like array film with hierarchical structures on glass substrate using the colloidal monolayer as a template. In these special hierarchical structures, microstructures were provided by a colloidal template of polystyrene latex spheres and nanostructures resulting from the thermal decomposition of silver acetate. These structures were chemically modified with 1-hexadecanethiol, and a corresponding self-assembled monolayer (SAM) was formed on their surfaces. Due to the lotus leaf-like morphology with hierarchical micro/nanostructures, the film displayed an extraordinary superhydrophobicity after chemical modification. Water contact angle and sliding angle were 169 degrees and 3 degrees (the weight of water droplets: 3 mg), respectively. Additionally, its optical property has also been investigated. This structure could be used in microfluidic devices, optical devices, and biological science.

We study two geometrical factors needed for the correct construction of statistical ensembles of surfaces. Such ensembles appear in the study of fluid bilayer membranes, though our results are more generally applicable. The naive functional measure over height fluctuations must be corrected by these factors in order to give correct, self-consistent formulas for the free energy and correlation functions of the height. While one of these correctionsthe Faddeev-Popov determinant -has been studied extensively, our derivation proceeds from very simple geometrical ideas, which we hope removes some of its mystery. The other factor is similar to the Liouville correction in string theory. Since our formulas differ from those of previous authors, we include some explicit calculations of the effective frame tension and two-point function to show that our version indeed secures coordinate-invariance and consistency to lowest nontrivial order in a temperature expansion.

Photoluminescence study was performed on indium–oxide (INO) nanoparticles dispersed within pores of mesoporous silica, annealed at different temperatures (from 500 to 850 °C). It was found that, for the dispersed INO nanoparticles, there exists a broad luminescence band, consisting of three peaks at about 430, 480, and 520 nm, spanning the whole visible region, in contrast to the aggregates of INO nanoparticles which exhibit no luminescence. This band increases with rise of annealing temperature up to 650 °C, at which the band reaches maximum. When annealing temperature is 700 °C, the whole band redshifts and peaks at about 545 nm. Annealing at higher temperatures leads to additional redshift and decrease of the luminescence band. It has been shown that the luminescence in this study is associated with the size and the structure of the INO particles within pores of porous silica. The peaks at 430, 480, and 520 nm originate from amorphous INO particles about 2, 4, and 6 nm in diameter. The 545 nm peak is attributed to crystallized INO particles with larger size.