A novel and simple chemical route was developed for the deposition of ZnO film from aqueous solution, integrating the merits of successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction and chemical bath deposition. ZnO thin films on glass and Si(1 0 0) substrates were deposited with the precursor of zinc-ammonia complex. As-deposited ZnO film exhibits good crystallinity with the hexagonal wurtzite crystalline structure and the preferential orientation along (0 0 2) plane. With a dense and continuous appearance, the film is composed of ZnO particles in even size of 200-300 nm. Under the excitation of 340 nm, strong and sharp near band gap emission (similar to 391 nm) dominates the photopurninescence spectra with several weak emission peaks related to the deep level (similar to 450-500 nm). In addition, the mechanism for the deposition process of ZnO from aqueous solution was preliminarily discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.