By means of a porous template without removing the aluminium substrate, a technique of pulsed electrodeposition with an intermittent symmetric square pulse has successfully been applied to fabricate Ni nanowire array. The as-obtained nanowires have a diameter of about 60 nm and exhibit high aspect ratio of more than 50. The electron diffraction pattern investigation demonstrates that the nanowires are single crystal. Moreover, a highly preferential orientation [220] of the as-obtained Ni nanowires with high purity decided by XRD has been obtained, and the preferred orientation is weakened remarkably by an annealing process. Furthermore, the investigation of magnetic properties by VSM indicates that the as-obtained Ni nanowire array has an obvious magnetic anisotropy and exhibits a good thermal stability. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.