Zinc oxide (ZnO) products with the morphologies of balls, nunchakus and belts have been synthesized from aqueous solutions by adjusting the reagent concentration and reaction time. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) peaks of the products were indexed to ZnO materials, but exhibited different relative intensities for the (0 0 2) diffraction peak. Field emission (FE) measurements showed that the turn-on and threshold field for the ZnO nanonunchakus were 3.01 +/- 0.005 and 5.47 +/- 0.005, 3.71 +/- 0.005 and 6.43 +/- 0.005 V/mu m, respectively, for the ZnO nanobelts, revealing that the products have comparable FE properties with those of the reported ZnO nanowires and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.