Herein, we report a binder-free, stable, and high-performance hydrazine chemical sensor based on vertically aligned zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO NRs), grown on silver (Ag) electrode via low-temperature solution route. The morphological characterizations showed that the NRs were grown vertically in high density and possess good crystallinity. The as-fabricated hydrazine chemical sensors showed an excellent sensitivity of 105.5 mu A mu M-1 cm(-2), a linear range up to 98.6 mu M, and low detection limit of 0.005 mu M. It also showed better long-term stability, good reproducibility and selectivity. Furthermore, the fabricated electrodes were evaluated for hydrazine detection in water samples. We found the approach of directly growing nanostructures as a key factor for enhanced sensing performance of our electrodes, which effectively transfers electron from ZnO NRs to conductive Ag electrode. Thus it holds future prospective applications as binder-free, cost-effective, and stable sensing devices fabrication. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.