The effect of surface roughness on subsequent growth of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) nanowires is examined. With increasing surface roughness, both the number density and aspect ratio of V2O5 nanowires increase. Structures and morphology of obtained nanowires were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The nanowires are approximately 40-90 nm in diameter and 2 mu m in length. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis indicates that the obtained nanowires are orthorhombic structure with (0 0 1) out-of-plane orientation. The luminescence property of V2O5 nanowires has been investigated by photoluminescence (PL) at 150 K and 300 K. PL results show intense visible emission, which is attributed to different inter-band transitions between the V 3d and O 2p band. This simple fabrication approach might be useful for fabrication of large area V2O5 nanowires arrays with high density. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.