Surface wettability of solid materials is significant for both fundamental research and engineering applications. Compared with most existing fabrication methods of superhydrophilic surfaces by UV exposure or chemical modification, in this work, a superhydrophilic ceria coating on ITO substrate is developed by a fast, simple one-step method. It is found that the superhydrophilicity of ceria coatings is strongly dependent on both the patterned microstructures benefiting the capillary effect and the peculiar chemical composition of ceria inducing numerous oxygen vacancies and large surface free energy. Owing to the inherent physical stability of ceria, such a superhydrophilic ceria coating exhibits an excellently thermal stability at both room temperature and higher temperature. These results open up new avenues for the underlying applications of superhydrophilic coatings, such as heat transfer/dissipation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.