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The fast growth of aligned ZnO nanowire arrays with optimized structure is attractive for electrical and optical devices. In this paper, we report a controllable and rapid growth of ZnO nanowire arrays by a microwave-assisted hydrothermal method. When using different zinc salts as the precursors, the morphology of the samples changes a lot and the length growth rate is several times different. The growth mechanism is also investigated. It is found that the solution near neutral pH value is ideal for fast nanowire growth, in which the length of the nanowires increases linearly with growth time and the growth rate is over ten times faster than that in the traditional hydrothermal method. Therefore, aligned ZnO nanowire arrays can grow up to tens of microns in a few hours, while the density and sizes of these nanowires can be well controlled. The ZnO nanowire arrays used as photocatalysts present good photocatalytic performance to the degradation of methyl orange (MO) due to the large surface area. So this paper provides an effective method to obtain vertically aligned ZnO nanowire arrays for practical applications.