In this work, ZnTe single crystalline nanowires and twinning nanobelts were synthesized to investigate the relationship between microstructure and optical properties. Power-dependent photoluminescence measurements reveal that the emission peaks of the single crystalline nanowires redshift with increasing the excitation power as a result of the band-gap renormalization effect. However, the photoluminescence redshift of the twinning nanobelts is larger than that of the nanowires, which is caused by both band-gap renormalization effect and electron-hole plasma effect induced by the increase of carrier density in the twin structure at high excitation power. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.