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A simple hydrothermal self-assembly method was adopted to grow a newly reported superhydrophobic reticulate ZnO film with papillary nodes. The formation mechanism has also been explained by the tension junction model. This structure can extremely enhance the dewettability for the surface modification with low-surface-energy materials such as long chain fluorinated organic compounds. The surfaces of the ZnO thin film were superhydrophobic with a contact angle (CA) of 170 degrees +/- 1 degrees, while the sliding angle (SA) is 2 degrees. The samples were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM).

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Gold and silver have an extremely low refractive index value of about 0.04 in the visible to near infrared (NIR) regions, and this induces a relative error of about 50% in refractive index measurements. This can lead to a large uncertainty in the imaginary part of the dielectric constants. A large difference exists between the experimental results and the classic models. The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors, which use tens of nanometer thick noble metal film as the sensing layer, show ultra-high sensitivity (reaching 10−8 RIU) in this spectral range. As the spectral sensitivity and amplitude of SPR curves depend on the thickness and the dielectric constant of the sensing layer, we obtained high precision optical constants of the noble metal film using a multi-wavelength angle-modulated SPR sensing technology. The dielectric constant inferred from the parameters of the SPR curves, rather than from the refractive index and absorption ratio of noble metals, introduced a relative error within 10% of the resonance angle measurement. The measurement results demonstrate that the dielectric constants of gold and silver nano-films are more consistent with the widely used experimental results than with the classical theoretical model and always fall in the upper half of the imaginary part of the uncertainty range in the spectra of 500–900 nm.