Supercritical water and subcritical water as new reaction medium was firstly used to synthesize YVO4 and rare earth-doped YVO4 ultra-fine particles. Such synthesis was a simple one-step process by using vanadium oxide, yttrium nitrate, rare earth nitrate and potassium hydroxide aqueous solution as the starting materials. It was found that the structure and morphology of the product were affected by various reaction conditions. The synthesized YVO4 particles were nearly cubic and cuboid shape with the average size ranging from 50 nm to 200 nm. The products were analyzed by structure characterization of XRD, morphology observation of SEM, TEM and other characterization techniques. The luminescent properties of rare earth-doped YVO4 powders excited by UV irradiation were reported. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.