The low temperature solution method was employed to synthesize aligned nanoporous zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods (NRs) on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) glass and applied as an electron mediator for the fabrication of high-sensitive chemical sensor towards the detection of p-nitrophenylamine (p-NPA) in an aqueous medium. Well-crystalline ZnO nanorods with nanoporous morphology were arranged vertically on the FTO substrate. The aligned nanoporous ZnO NRs thin film presented the good aspect ratio of Zn and O elements in terms of atomic weight percentage. The cyclovoltametry and amperometry analysis deduced the rapid electrocatalytic activity of aligned nanoporous ZnO NRs electrode towards p-NPA chemical. The aligned nanoporous ZnO NRs electrode was used to fabricate p-NPA chemical sensor which showed significantly high and reproducible sensitivity of similar to 184.26 mu A mM(-1) cm(-2) with a short response time >= 8 s. The fabricated p-NPA chemical sensor exhibited reasonable detection limit of similar to 53.7 mu M and good linearity in the range of 5-20 mu M with the correlation efficient of R = similar to 0.97569. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.