The control of dispersity and size of metal particles deposited on substrate surface are always the major challenges for fabricating the efficient and stable metallic nanoparticles-decorated composite. Herein, we proposed a simple liquid-phase atomic layer deposition (L-ALD) method to obtain an atomic-layered MnO2 nanoparticles loaded palygorskite nanorod (MnO2@Pal), involving two-step procedures comprised of the solid-liquid interfacial reaction between organic manganese precursor and surface hydroxyl groups of palygorskite, and then a calcination treatment to activate surface Mn, which is used as a powerful adsorbent for recovery of REE ions from wastewater. The results show that MnO2@Pal has a desirable adsorption capacity of 66.80, 45.17 and 48.78 mg/g for different REEs of Ce3+, Eu3+ and Dy3+ respectively, rapid adsorption rate (achieve above 85% capacity within 20 min) and low residual concentration (below 1.0 ppm). Full kinetic and isotherm analysis as well as thermodynamic study were also undertaken. Exciting, the MnO2@Pal exhibited an outstanding regeneration stability that almost no loss on adsorption capacity after 7 consecutive cycles accompanied by near 100% desorption ratio, overcoming the consistent deficiency for such kind composite adsorbent. These results provide a promising surface modification method for fabricating stable metal-modified composite. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Inc.