Nano-sized nickel powders were prepared by evaporating the bulk nickel metarial using transferred arc thermal plasma. Nitrogen gases are easily dissociated to atomic nitrogen in thermal plasma and they are quickly dissolved in molten nickel. Super-saturated atomic nitrogen in molten nickel is recombined to nitrogen gas because of the relatively low temperature of nickel surface. Generally, the recombine reaction of atomic nitrogen is exothermic, so bulk nickel is quickly evaporated to nickel vapor due to the thermal energy of recombine reaction. The particle size of nickel powder was controlled by N2 used as the diluting gas. It was observed that as the diluting gas flow rate was increase, the particle size was decreased and the particle size distribution was narrowed. The average particle size at 250 l/min of the diluting gas was 202 nm analyzed by means of the particle size analyzer (PSA).