We report a scalable and cost-effective fabrication approach for constructing bio-inspired micro/nanostructured surfaces. It involves silicon microstructure etching using a deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) method, nanowires deposition via glancing angle deposition (GLAD) process, and fluorocarbon thin film deposition. Compared with the smooth, microstructured, and nanostructured surfaces, the hierarchical micro/nanostructured surfaces obtained via this method showed the highest water contact angle of ∼161° and a low sliding angle of <10°. It also offered long ice delay times of 2313 s and 1658 s at −5°C and −10°C respectively, more than 10 times longer than smooth surfaces indicating excellent anti-icing properties and offering promising applications in low-temperature environments. These analyses further proved that the surface structures have a significant influence on surface wettability and anti-icing behavior. Hence, the GLAD process which is versatile and cost-effective offers the freedom of constructing nanostructures on top of microstructures to achieve the required objective in the fabrication of micro/nanostructured surfaces when compared to other fabrication techniques.

We report a cost-effective and scalable methodology for producing a hierarchical micro-/nanostructured silicon surface solely by metal-assisted chemical etching. It involves two major processing steps of fabricating micropillars and nanowires separately. The process of producing micro-scale structures by masked metal-assisted chemical etching was optimized. Silicon nanowires were created on the micropillar’s surface via maskless metal-assisted chemical etching. The hierarchical micro-/nanostructured surface exhibits superhydrophobic properties with a high contact angle of ~156° and a low sliding angle of <2.5° for deionized water. Furthermore, due to the existence of microscale and nanoscale air trapped at the liquid/solid interface, it exhibits a long ice delay time of 2876 s at −5 °C, more than 5 times longer than that of smooth surfaces. Compared to conventional dry etching methods, the metal-assisted chemical etching approach excludes vacuum environments and high-temperature processes and can be applied for applications requiring hierarchical micro-/nanostructured surfaces or structures.