Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) is a promising sensing material in developing an ethanol sensor with low power consumption, excellent sensitivity and good gas selectivity.Especially, various 1D V2O5 such as nanowires, nanorods and nanobelts with a less agglomerated configuration were found to possess highly selective and stable sensing properties to ethanol vapor due to their large specific surface areas, perfect single crystal structures and dimensions comparable to Debye length.