Superhydrophobic surface has many special functions and is widely investigated by researchers. Magnesium alloy is one of the lightest metal materials among the practice metals. It plays an important role in automobile, airplane and digital product for reducing devices weight. But due to the low standard potential, magnesium alloy has a high chemical activity and easily be corroded. That seriously impedes the application of magnesium alloy. In the process of fabrication a superhydrophobic surface on magnesium alloy, there are two ineluctable problems that must be solved: (1) high chemical activity and (2) the chemical activity is inhomogeneous on surface. In this study, we solved those problems by using the two characters to gain a rough surface on magnesium alloy and obtained a superhydrophobic surface after following modification process. The results show that the as-prepared superhydrophobic surface has obvious anti-corrosion effect in typically corrosive solution and naturally humid air. The delay-icing and self-cleaning effects are also investigated. The presented method is low-cost, fast and has great potential value in large-scale industry production. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.