Zinc oxide is an important chemical substance that is widely used in the production of various industrial products. However, to produce nano particle ZnO remains a challenge. This paper describes the synthesis of zinc oxide nanoparticles via precipitation and self-combustion methods. By precipitation method, the dissolved zinc nitrate solution is drop wisely into aqueous sodium hydroxide, NaOH as precipitating agent. Self-combustion technique is a new method to obtain nanoparticles by heating the materials until it combust at 110°C. Experiment has been done by dissolving Zn(NO3) 2.6H2O and HNO3. The dissolved solution was then stirred for 2 and 4 days followed by heating process until 110°C. By the data analysis, it demonstrated that ZnO prepared via selfcombustion gave better morphology, which can be referred to single-phase with nanorods structure at 2θ of 13.05° with average crystallite size of 563.10 nm. Raman and XRD result for self-combustion show higher purity singlephase structure compared to those samples prepared using precipitation technique. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.