We have developed a simple N-cetyl-N,N,N-trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB)-assisted hydrothermal route for the production of ZnO one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures on zinc foil at reaction temperature of 160 degrees C. With the increase of CTAB concentration, the one-dimensional structures change from microrod to a mixture of nano-and microrod and finally to nanorods. X-ray diffraction studies confirmed the proper phase formation of the grown nanostructures. The room temperature photoluminescence spectra showed that ZnO nanostructures prepared with increased CTAB concentration exhibited enhanced band edge UV emission and also blue shift of the emission peak. All the samples show no defect related green emission. Field emission property of the 1D structures has been investigated in detail. By tuning the CTAB concentration, the field emission property was optimized. The nanorods synthesized with high CTAB showed turn-on and threshold fields of 3.2 and 5 V/mu m, respectively, which are comparable to the values for vapour phase synthesized high field emitting ZnO nanostructures. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.