The phenomenon of band-gap engineering of ZnO inserts new platforms to its application base. A similar effort of engineering the optical band-gap of ZnO by ion beam irradiation has been put forwards via this study. We synthesised ZnO nanowires using polycarbonate track-etched membranes as templates. The effect of 50 MeV Li 3þ ion beam (different fluence) on the band-gap of synthesised ZnO nanowires have been studied from Tauc plot and the decrease in the optical band-gap with increase in the radiation fluence has been observed.