A mechanically durable and scalable superhydrophobic coating was fabricated by combining the advantages of
both bottom-up and top-down approaches into a one-pot, one-step application method. This is achieved by
spray coating a solution consisting of silica nanoparticles,which are embeddedwithin epoxy resin, onto a heated
substrate to rapidly drive both solvent evaporation and curing simultaneously. By maintaining a high substrate
temperature, the arrival of spray-delivered micrometer-sized droplets are rapidly cured onto the substrate to
form surface microroughness, while simultaneously, rapid solvent evaporation within each droplet results in
the formation of a nanoporous structure. SEM, dual-beamFIB, and cross-sectional TEM/EDAX elementalmapping
were used to confirm both the chemistry and the requisitemicro- and nano-porositywithin the coating structure
requisite for superhydrophobicity. The resultant coatings exhibit contact angles greater than 150° (153.8°±0.8°)
and roll-off angles of 8°± 2°, with a coating hardness of 6H on the pencil hardness scale, and a rating of 5 on an
ASTM crosshatch test.