Robust non-sticky/sticky antifouling coating capable of temporal evolution

Antifouling coatings, which have important value for submerged marine structures, are faced with the challenge of inherent conflicting property requirements, i.e. the topcoat is desirable to prevent adherence of marine organisms and the basecoat should be able to maximize bonding to the substrate. Besides, the existing antifouling coatings have other tricky problems, like easy depletion of liquid lubricant of slippery liquid-infused porous surface and poor static microbes resistance of hydrophobic surface. Herein, a facile solution is proposed using the newly developed reversibly interlocked polymer networks, which enables temporally and spatially controllable multiple antifouling actions. Aided by dynamic covalent chemistry, the immiscible crosslinked polymers carrying various components with unique functionalities are uniformly interweaved producing a novel non-sticky/sticky antifouling composite coating (NSCC). Consequently, a series of non-contact and contact antifouling strategies based on physical and chemical interactions are seamlessly combined with high cohesion and interfacial adhesion. Either the surface or the subsurface of the NSCC exhibits excellent resistance to protein and bacteria under both static and dynamic conditions. The properties of the NSCC comprehensively outperform those of the analogues reported in the literatures. From a practical perspective, the redundancy design has set up a novel paradigm for preparing long-lasting antifouling coating.