Ice accumulation on insulators may inflict problems of flashover accidents, tower collapse and power failure. In this work, the nanostructured film on glass was fabricated by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. The wettability, surface morphology, chemical composition and XRD pattern were analyzed by corresponding methods. The anti-icing performance in "glaze ice" was investigated in an artificial climate chamber. It was found that the as-prepared superhydrophobic (SHP) surface exhibited a prominent superhydrophobicity with a contact angle (CA) of 165.6 degrees and sliding angle smaller than 1 degrees. The superhydrophobicity of the as-prepared SHP surface was attributed to the low surface energy of hexade-cyltrimethoxy silane and ZnO nanorods along with the presence of high fraction of air pockets. Besides, the as-prepared SHP surface demonstrated excellent anti-icing behavior in glaze ice and could effectively reduce the freezing area. The results showed that 70.4% of the as-prepared SHP surface remained free of ice after spraying for 90 min in glaze. This method proposed a way to design an anti-icing surface and may have potential in application on glass insulators against ice accumulation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.