The invention relates to a metal surface modification method, which belongs to the technical field of metal materials and is used for solving the problems of high production cost, complex process, difficult control and the like of metal surface composite carbon nanotube layer technology. The technical plan is: select the carbon nanotube raw material prepared by the catalytic chemical vapor deposition method containing iron catalyst, go through the steps of raw material grinding, deployment of carbon nanotube composite layer melt, magnetophoretic deposition of oriented carbon nanotube suspension layer, rolling and cold embedding, etc. , a composite layer with 0.05-1.0mm aligned carbon nanotubes is obtained on the metal surface. The method of the invention can orderly orient the carbon nanotubes of the composite layer on the metal surface, and can adjust the thickness of the composite layer according to the application purpose. The surface layer of ordinary metal materials is endowed with the excellent characteristics of carbon nanotubes, so that its technical indicators such as oxidation resistance, wear resistance, self-lubrication, and strength are greatly improved. Compared with the prior art, the method of the invention has low cost of production raw materials, simple and easy-to-control process, less investment in equipment, and is suitable for continuous batch production.