With years of explorations, researchers have achieved great success in fabricating superhydrophobic materials, herein, silica-based materials play an important role. In general, silica exists in three different morphologies when constructing superhydrophobic materials, they are silica particles, silica micro-string networks, and silica gels. Based on this, we give out a panoramic presentation about the synthesis, fabrications, and properties of these "different kinds of silica". Besides, some of recent applications, such as anti-reflection, oil-water separation, environmental applications, etc, are briefly introduced. This review is aimed at setting up a system for the silica-based superhydrophobic materials, summarizing the previous works of this domain, and more importantly, providing reference for the subsequent studies. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.