This article presents a facile approach about the designed synthesis of one-dimensional (1D) dysprosium-based coordination polymer wires under solvothermal conditions with dysprosium chloride and tributyl phosphate (TBP) as starting materials. The wires are in the length of several hundreds of micrometers and diameter in the range of 0.4-2 mu m. Time-dependent results revealed that the coordination polymer wires were not stable and evolved into three-dimensional (3D) flower-like tetragonal DyPO4 superstructures with the prolonging of reaction time. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution TEM (HRTEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), energy disperse spectroscopy (EDS), thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA) were employed to characterize the samples. Interestingly, with the assistance of lauryl sodium sulfate, rice-like macroporous hexagonal DyPO4 microstructures with a BET surface area of 2.13 m(2)/g were successfully fabricated. A possible formation mechanism for the morphology evolution of the DyPO4 superstructures was also discussed. Magnetic measurement revealed that the products were antiferromagnetic. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.