Mass fabrication of flexible pieces with hydrophobic surface for underwater vehicle coating

Bio-inspired structures on flexible polymer targeting functional characteristics such as unti-fouling or drag reduction are of vital importance to underwater vehicle coating. This paper reports the regular micro-honeycomb hydrophobic surface with aspect-ratio larger than 3 and nanoscale roughness, achieved by a high throughput replication method of microinjection molding, for the first time, which offers commercial potential. Besides, with low surface energy film conformal coated, contact angle test result confirms the metastable state between Cassie-Baxter and Wenzel states, and drag reduction characteristics are improved more than 30%.