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Pure and Ni-doped ZnO nanostructures have been synthesized by a solvothermal process. The structure, morphology and properties of as-synthesized samples have been investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), selected-area electron diffraction (SAED), UV-vis spectrometer as well as by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). XRD and EDS studies indicated that the as-prepared products were well-crystallized wurtzite hexagonal structure. The SEM and TEM images show that the individual Zn0.96Ni0.04O nanostructure is composed of several nanorods with average diameter of 200 nm and lengths of 500 nm. The structure and morphology analyses show that Ni doping can influence the nanostructures morphology, but cannot change the crystal structures of ZnO samples. The UV-vis spectra showed that Ni dopant can result in an appreciable blue-shift for the absorption edge of the Ni-doped ZnO samples. The band gap energy of the Zn0.96Ni0.04O nanostructure was about 3.23 eV. By magnetic measurements, it was observed that the pure ZnO nanostructure exhibits diamagnetic property while the sample of 4% Ni shows an obvious ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature due to the formation of solid solution Zn0.96Ni0.04O, sp-d and d-d carrier exchange interactions, and the presence of abundant defects and oxygen vacancies.