Taking candle soot as a template, cured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is firstly used for CVD at a high temperature in air to create robust and antireflective superhydrophobic surfaces. No organic solutions or chemical modification is needed. Three-phase lines of the surface are studied by observing the light projection view.Because of their excellent characteristics including waterrepellency, self-cleaning, anti-icing and drag-reduction, superhydrophobic surfaces have gained much attention in the past decades. 1-6 To obtain these surfaces, hierarchical or micro/nano structures are essential, and except for a few examples, 7 almost all superhydrophobic surfaces are made from or on low surface energy materials. In some practical areas such as windshields, lenses and the glass of solar cells, besides self-cleaning, transparency is a must and antireection is a better choice. [8][9][10][11][12] Meanwhile, if these surfaces combine robust properties, 13 for example, resistance to the impact of water and dust particles, repellency to acid and basic solution and thermal stability, they will nd a wider application.Plasma etching, 14,15 so lithography, 16,17 sol-gel, 18,19 phase separation, 20,21 templating method, 22 and nanoparticle assembly 23,24 are now general methods adopted to prepare transparent superhydrophobic surfaces. Among these approaches, templating method is a good approach that usually involves four steps: fabrication of a template, creation of structures on the template, calcination to remove the template and hydrophobilization. This method can construct porous structures that are helpful to improve the superhydrophobicity and transparency. Recently, carbon nanometer materials have become a hot topic in the preparation of superhydrophobic surfaces due to their desirable structures. [25][26][27][28][29] They are also used as templates to prepare transparent superhydrophobic surfaces 30-32 because a thermal oxidation process is able to remove them. In a templating method, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods were widely used for either creation of structures, or modication of low surface energy substances, e.g. hydrolysis and condensation of tetraethylorthosilicate and modication of semi-uorinated silane. 30,32 But, because the raw materials were usually liquid and extremely reactive, these CVD oen demanded sophisticated equipment and harsh conditions and could not obtain rough structures and low surface energy within one step. Besides, in almost every reported template method, the common-used four steps were all involved and the costly semi-uorinated silane was oen employed to reduce the surface energy. So, it would be a signicant progress to achieve antireective superhydrophobic surfaces with low cost and fewer operations.Herein, taking candle soot as a template, we rstly use cured PDMS for CVD to create antireective superhydrophobic surfaces by controlling the amount of cured PDMS, the temperature and the holding time. It is notable that this novel CVD is carried out in air at a high tempe...