[en] In the present study, 100 MeV Ag⁷⁺ ion beam-induced structural and optical modifications of nanocrystalline ZnO thin films are investigated. The nanocrystalline ZnO thin films are grown using radio frequency magnetron sputtering and irradiated at fluences of 3 × 10¹², 1 × 10¹³ and 3 × 10¹³ ions/cm². The incident swift heavy ions induced change in the crystallinity together with the preferential growth of crystallite size along the c axis (002) orientation. The average crystallite size is found to be increased from 10.8 ± 0.7 to 20.5 ± 0.3 nm with increasing the ion fluence. The Atomic force microscopy analysis confirms the variation in the surface roughness by varying the incident ion fluences. The UV–visible spectroscopy shows the decrement in transmittance of the film with ion irradiation. The micro-Raman spectra of ZnO thin films are investigated to observe ion-induced modifications which support the increased lattice defects with higher fluence. The variation in crystallinity indicates that ZnO-based devices can be used in piezoelectric transduction mechanism. (author)