Objective To study the influence law of wear resistance for 304 stainless steel implanted with N, Ti, Al ions, in order to provide a reference for the improvement of 304 stainless steel. Methods The plasma implantation technology was used to implant 304 stainless steel with N, Ti, and Al ions respectively at different doses, and surface microstructure, surface hardness test and friction wear test were performed on each sample after ion implantation, and the results were compared with those of the 304 stainless steel substrate. Results The results showed that the samples of 304 stainless steel implanted with all 3 kinds of ions had a flat and dense surface without cracks and with a certain smoothness, but with increased implantation dose, the smoothness decreased because the excessive ion implantation could cause blistering and lead to a porous morphology. In addition, all three kinds of ions implantation could improve the surface hardness of 304 stainless steel, and the sample hardness with high-dose implantation was higher than that with low-dose implantation, in comparison, the improvement in the surface hardness of samples implanted with N ions was more obvious. Compared to the non-implanted substrate, the friction coefficient decreased after implanted with N or Ti ions, while the friction coefficient of sample implanted with Al ions increased, but the amount of wears on all implanted samples reduced significantly. The wear resistance of all the samples implanted with N, Al ions at a high-dose was higher than that of the samples with low-dose implantation, while the wear resistance of the sample implanted with Ti ions at a high-dose was lower than that of the sample with the low-dose implantation, however, it was still higher than that of the samples implanted with N or Al ions. Conclusion Under the same experimental conditions and implantation process, the N ion implantation improved the surface hardness most significantly (at a dose of 5. 0×1017 ions / cm2 ), by about 41% , while the Ti ion implantation improved the wear resistance most significantly (at a dose of 3. 0×1017 ions / cm2 ), by about 6 times.