A facile chemical route is presented to synthesize ZnO nanoarrays including one-dimensional nanowire arrays and two-dimensional porous nanosheet arrays. Large-scale ZnO nanowire arrays with the length of 5 microm and aspect ratio of 42 were achieved by cyclic growth in aqueous solution. After being immerged in the zinc acetate solution for 24 h, the ZnO nanowire arrays converted to sheet-like Zn5(OH)8(CH3COO)2 arrays. Subsequently, the sheet-like Zn5(OH)8(CH3COO)2 arrays converted to the porous ZnO nanosheet arrays by annealing treatment. As demonstrated by the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), the porous ZnO nanosheet arrays can improve the efficiency of DSC effectively. In addition, the synthesized ZnO nanoarrays have potential applications in solar cells, catalysis, sensors and other nanodevices.