Abstract: In order to improve the tribological property of steel, it is necessary to modify the surface of steel to generate ceramic film. At present, many methods for preparing ceramic film need to be operated at high temperature, which can reduce the mechanical properties of the coating. The micro-arc oxidation technology can obtain the ceramic film with high wear resistance and strong adhesion, but the micro-arc oxidation technology can only be used for valve metal in general. Therefore, the micro-arc oxidation on the steel surface is to pretreat the steel. The pretreatment processes widely used in steel micro-arc oxidation composite film mainly include hot dip plating, spraying (hot spraying, cold spraying) and ion plating (multi-arc ion plating, magnetron sputtering, etc.). Meanwhlie, the advantages and disadvantages of each method are analyzed.