Cadmium oxide (CdO) nanostructures of various shapes were successfully grown on gold (Au) nanocolloid coated c-plane sapphire substrates by atmospheric-pressure CVD using Cd powder and H2O as source materials. CdO nanorods (NRs) exhibited tapered shapes and the degree of the tapering became larger with increasing substrate temperature. One of the possible reasons for the tapering behavior is the competition between the axial growth due to the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism and the radial growth due to the vapor-solid (VS) mechanism. The influence of the competition between the two different growth mechanisms was also confirmed on the appearance of "seaweed-like" NRs. Moreover, we cannot neglect the influence of the shrinkage of catalyst particles during the growth process on the tapering behavior. In addition, there is a possibility that the temporal evolution of catalyst particles, such as diffusion, splitting, migration and coalescence, contributes not only to the disappearance of catalyst particles on the tips of the NRs, resulting in the enhancement of the radial growth relative to the axial growth, but also to the formation of nanobelts (NBs) and nanotrees (NTs). Photoacoustic measurements revealed that the absorption edge shifts towards lower energies and the absorption band below the absorption edge becomes larger with increasing T-S. This tendency may be due to the increase of intrinsic defects and/or the decrease in residual impurities. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.