High quality single crystalline CuV2O6 (CVO) nanowires were successfully grown on the silicon substrates by simple thermal annealing of spin coated film in air. The synthesized nanowires have an average diameter of 100 nm, and length ranges between 1 and 5 mu m, with growth direction along < 201 >. We found that growth temperature play a vital role in controlling the phase and the diameter of nanowires in this process. We propose a growth mechanism based on the experimental results. Field emission properties were revealed to be strongly morphology dependent. The nanowires in small diameter and high aspect ratio exhibited the best FE performance showing excellent field emission current densities 1.2 mA cm(-2) with a low turn-on field of similar to 1.2 V mu m(-1). The experimental results show that CVO nanowires are promising candidate in realizing high performance field emission display. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.