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Abstract Bio-inspired, micro/nanotextured surfaces have a variety of applications including superhydrophobicity, self-cleaning, anti-icing, antibiofouling, and drag reduction. In this paper, a template-free and scalable roll coating process is studied for fabrication of micro/nanoscale topographies surfaces. These micro/nanoscale structures are generated with viscoelastic polymer nanocomposites and derived by controlling ribbing instabilities in forward roll coating. The relationship between process conditions and surface topography is studied in terms of shear rate, capillary number, and surface roughness parameters (e.g., Wenzel factor and the density of peaks). For a given shear rate, the sample roughness increased with a higher capillary number until a threshold point. Similarly, for a given capillary number, the roughness increased up to a threshold range associated with shear rate. A peak density coefficient (PDC) model is proposed to relate capillary number and shear rate to surface roughness. The optimum range of the shear rate and the capillary number was found to be 40–60 s−1 and 4.5 × 105–6 × 105, respectively. This resulted in a maximum Wenzel roughness factor of 1.91, a peak density of 3.94 × 104 (1/mm2), and a water contact angle (WCA) of 128 deg. 

Abstract Periodic micro/nanoscale structures from nature have inspired the scientific community to adopt surface design for various applications, including superhydrophobic drag reduction. One primary concern of practical applications of such periodic microstructures remains the scalability of conventional microfabrication technologies. This study demonstrates a simple template‐free scalable manufacturing technique to fabricate periodic microstructures by controlling the ribbing defects in the forward roll coating. Viscoelastic composite coating materials are designed for roll‐coating using carbon nanotubes (CNT) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which helps achieve a controllable ribbing with a periodicity of 114–700 µm. Depending on the process parameters, the patterned microstructures transition from the linear alignment to a random structure. The periodic microstructure enables hydrophobicity as the water contact angles of the samples ranged from 128° to 158°. When towed in a static water pool, a model boat coated with the microstructure film shows 7%–8% faster speed than the boat with a flat PDMS film. The CNT addition shows both mechanical and electrical properties improvement. In a mechanical scratch test, the cohesive failure of the CNT‐PDMS film occurs in ≈90% higher force than bare PDMS. Moreover, the nonconductive bare PDMS shows sheet resistance of 747.84–22.66 Ω □⁻¹with 0.5 to 2.5 wt% CNT inclusion.