With aging treated zinc powder as raw materials,the tetrapod-like ZnO material was prepared by high-temperature vapour phase oxidation method. The ZnO field emission cathode arrays were prepared by the application of thick-film,lithography and screen printing technologies. The cathode plate and anode plate were made of a 5 inch (12.7 cm) monochrome parallel-gate structure field emission display (FED) panel and its field emission performance was tested. The parameters such as the gate voltage,anode voltage as well as cathode thickness which affect the emission performance were analyzed and discussed. The FED can achieve full-screen light emission by driving at about 4000 V anode voltage and 300 V gate voltage. The experimental results show that the structure of ZnO parallel-gate structure FED has a good regulation,a good field emission performance and good application prospects.