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Abstract: Here in, the synthesis of the terbium doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Tb3+) nanorods via room temperature chemical co-precipitation was explored and their structural, photoluminescence (PL) and thermoluminescence (TL) studies were investigated in detail. The present samples were found to have pure hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure. The as obtained samples were broadly composed of nanoflakes while the highly crystalline nanorods have been formed due to low temperature annealing of the as synthesized samples. The diameters of the nanoflakes are found to be in the range 50–60nm whereas the nanorods have diameter 60–90nm and length 700–900nm. FTIR study shows Zning band at 475cm−1 showing improved crystal quality with annealing. The bands at 1545 and 1431cm−1 are attributed to asymmetric and symmetric Cing vibration modes. The diffuse reflectance spectra show band edge emission near 390nm and a blue shift of the absorption edge with higher concentration of Tb doping. The PL spectra of the Tb3+-doped sample exhibited bright bluish green and green emissions at 490nm (5D4 → 7F6) and 544nm (5D4 → 7F5) respectively which is much more intense then the blue (450nm), bluish green (472nm) and broad green emission (532nm) for the undoped sample. An efficient energy transfer process from ZnO host to Tb3+ is observed in PL emission and excitation spectra of Tb3+-doped ZnO ions. The doped sample exhibits a strong TL glow peak at 255°C compared to the prominent glow peak at 190°C for the undoped sample. The higher temperature peaks are found to obey first order kinetics whereas the lower temperature peaks obey 2nd order kinetics. The glow peak at 255°C for the Tb3+ doped sample has an activation energy 0.98eV and frequency factor 2.77×108 s−1. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]