Cadmium sulfide films of different thicknesses were deposited by chemical bath deposition (CBD) from a bath containing cadmium chloride, ammonium chloride, ammonium hydroxide and thiourea. The XRD patterns show that the films have a hexagonal phase with a preferential (002) orientation. The photoluminescence spectra show a defect structure, characteristics of the US films obtained by CBD. The electrical behavior in dark and under illumination, the optical properties and the band gap value reported in this work is in agreement with that reported in the literature. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.