ABSTRACT Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanowires with hexagonal structure were successfully synthesized by chemical bath deposition technique. The obtained nanowires were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) and spectrophotometer. The SEM micrographs revealed the morphology of ZnO nanowires with diameter between 170.3 and 481nm and showed that the pH of the bath solution, 8.1 is the optimized value to form ZnO nanowires with hexagonal shape. The XRD pattern of the samples revealed that ZnO nanowire has a hexagonal crystallite structure and further showed that the crystallite size supported by Scherrer’s equation increase with increasing annealing temperature (0.536 nm, 0.541nm, 0.557 nm at 1000 C, 1500 C and 2000 C) respectively. The EDX analysis revealed the elemental compositions of samples and confirmed the presence of Zn and O. The results of the optical analysis showed that ZnO nanowire has high absorbance in the ultraviolet and infrared regions with high transmittance in the visible region. The results further revealed that the absorbance of the nanowire increase with increasing annealing temperature. Its high absorbance in the ultraviolet region suggest that it can be use as solar harvester for trapping solar energy for photovoltaic panel which is capable of converting sunlight radiation directly to electricity for commercial or industrial purpose.