Response surface methodology was employed to guide the growth of ZnO rod arrays. With its assistance, the growth quality of the obtained samples was improved dramatically. The morphologies evolved from sparsely, randomly oriented rods to dense and upright rod arrays. Moreover, the significant parameters for ZnO rod arrays growth and their optimal regions were also determined. Furthermore, with the optimized parameters, the obtained aspect ratio of the vertically aligned ZnO rod arrays reached a value of 31. This is relatively a high value of ZnO rod arrays synthesized by wet chemical methods without capping agents in neutral solutions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.