The effect of oxygen pressure in the synthesis of ZnO nanostructures through thermal evaporation of Zn powder was investigated. The thermal evaporation process was carried out in oxygen ambient for 1 hr at 1,000℃ under different pressures. The oxygen pressure was changed in range of 0.5 ? 900 Torr. Any nanostructure was not formed on the specimens prepared at oxygen pressures lower than 10 Torr. When oxygen pressure was 100 Torr, ZnO nanowires were observed. With increasing the oxygen pressure to 500 Torr, the morphology of ZnO nanostructures changed from wire to tetrapod. For all the samples, room temperature photoluminescence spectra show a strong green emission peak at around 550 nm.
