The development of ZnO nanowires by the low-temperature, surface scalable, and easily implemented chemical bath deposition technique has been boosted for two decades by the great control over their structural morphology and properties with an excellent uniformity. However, the resulting ZnO nanowires suffer from relatively poor optical properties, which are highly detrimental for their efficient integration into real-world engineering devices. Here, we show that the hydrogen- and deuterium-plasma treatments result in a remarkable increase by more than two orders of magnitude in the intensity of the near‐band edge emission of ZnO nanowires through the formation of surface excitons, along with the large increase in the surface exciton lifetime from about 6 to 48 ps. The enhancement is attributed to an efficient passivation process of the surface defects of ZnO nanowires with hydrogen, further decreasing the density of surface traps from about $4.0\times {10}^{13}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$ to $3.8\times {10}^{12}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$, and it is also shown to be highly stable over time. These findings reveal that the structural and optical quality of ZnO nanowires grown by chemical bath deposition through the occurrence of surface excitons induced by hydrogen and deuterium passivation can approach those of much more sophisticated physical and chemical vapor deposition techniques proceeding at higher temperature and under vacuum. Eventually, the present plasma treatments offer a great opportunity to boost the optical quality of ZnO nanowires grown by chemical bath deposition for a vast number of optical and optoelectronics devices, renewing the high interest in the wet chemistry processes.

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• Impurities
• Point defects