The physical properties of nanometer scale semiconductors are known to be sensitively influenced by their aspect ratios, but the intrinsic mechanisms still remain unclear. Shape-controlled anisotropic PbSe nanorods were obtained by means of the addition of MnCl2, and the aspect ratio of the nanorods can be continuously tuned from 1 to 10 by simply modulating the amount of chloride ions. It was demonstrated that an optimized concentration of Cr- anions is about 0.04 mmol, which controls the competition between thermodynamics and kinetics mechanisms. The emission peaks of the infrared absorbance and photoluminescence spectra were significantly tuned from 1664 nm to 1840 nm and from 1459 nm to 1938 nm only by the aspect ratios, respectively. A strong electric dipole phenomenon localized onside the surface of PbSe nanorods terminated by Pb2+ charge was found by using high-spatial-resolution off-axis electron holography, which was furthermore evidenced by the quantitative analysis of the mean inner potential and the surfaces charge. The charge intensity depended on the aspect ratio of PbSe nanorods. The results provide clear evidence that the energy gap interval reduces as a result of the increasing of conduction charge amounts. A novel strategy to facilely shift the peak position of absorbance and photoluminescence emission was therefore proposed. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Inc.