Crystalline NiCX nanorods (NCNRs) were successfully prepared on fused silica and sapphire (0001) substrates with different shapes and growth orientations via the pulsed laser deposition accompanied by N-2 annealing. The effects of experimental parameters including substrates, annealing duration, temperature and environment on the growth of crystalline NCNRs were studied in detail. Densely and uniformly distributed NCNRs with varied crystal orientations of hexagonal structure could be grown on silica and sapphire substrates, and only groups of SiO2 nanowires were grown on Si substrates. The NCNRs can be formed within only 3 min in pure N-2 atmosphere at the annealing temperature of 1200 degrees C. It was found that the pure N-2 atmosphere in the annealing process was necessary for the NCNR growth and the annealing in air could only obtain sparsely distributed nano-scaled particles. Besides, the NCNR films demonstrated excellent transmittance in visible light. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.