Nanowires made of aluminum borate formed of Al18B4O33 have been synthesized in high yield by improving the traditional chemical flux method for the growth of aluminum borate with the fibrous structure. In this study, aluminum powder was added into the aluminum oxide and boron oxide reactants as an additive in order to control the morphology of the final products. The chemical method reported here is utilized to decrease the diameters of traditional aluminum borate fiber into nanoscale and to increase their lengths. The optimum experimental parameters and possible growth mechanism for the compound nanowires have been presented. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.