Three flower-like and one rod-shape cubic Cu2S nanostructures were successfully synthesized from a facile hydrothermal method employing CuCl2 center dot 2H(2)O and thiourea as Cu and S source with different volume ratio of ethanol and distilled water, respectively. Hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium Bromide (CTAB) plays an important role in forming the nanorod. After thermal annealing treatment, tetragonal Cu1.81S nanoflower and nanorod were obtained for the first time. Field emission (FE) properties of these nanostructures were investigated for the first time. The results indicated that the tetragonal Cu1.81S nanorods had excellent field emission performance with turn-on field of similar to 2.2V mu m(-1), threshold field of similar to 5.1V mu m(-1) and enhancement factor of 1532. It showed that the tetragonal Cu1.81S nanostructures were competitive material in field emission applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.