Magnesium is the lightest structural metal and has been widely used in automotive,electronic and aerospace engineering.Recently,Magnesium alloys are also considered revolutionary metallic biomaterials due to their intriguing biodegradability.However,poor corrosion resistance is always one of the obstacles to trouble their applications.Surface engineering is often implemented to protect or improve the properties of Mg alloys and in this invited talk,recent work related to magnesium research conducted in our laboratory is described and reviewed.First,we introduce a successful design of superhydrophobic surfaces on Mg alloys,which is inspired by the lotus leaves effect.In our experiment,the wettability of the superhydrophobic surface is tailored from Wenzel state towards Cassie state and higher corrosion resistance of Mg alloy is correspondingly acquired due to less contact with water.Second,we report our recent findings about self protection behavior of Mg alloys in simulated physiological environment.