Due to their unique optical properties, solar selective coatings enhance the thermal efficiency of solar photothermal converters. Hence it seems to be interesting to study the optical properties of promising materials as solar selective coatings. In an earlier work, it was demonstrated that sol-gel deposited cobalt oxide thin films possess suitable optical properties as selective coatings. In this work, cobalt oxide thin films were prepared by same technique and their optical properties were analyzed as a function of the dipping time of the substrate in the sol, using the spectroscopy ellipsometry, atomic force microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy techniques. The optical constants (n and k) for these films, in the 200-800 nm range, are reported as a function of the dipping time. The fitting of ellipsometric data, I-s and I-c, for the glass substrate and the cobalt oxide thin film, as modeled with the Lorentz and Tauc-Lorentz dispersion relations, indicated that the film microstructure resembles a multilayer stack with voids. From these results, the CO3O4 and void percentages in the film were estimated. Both, thin film thickness and void/CO3O4 percentage ratio, were determined to be strongly dependent on the immersion time. Furthermore, the total thickness of a multilayered film was found to be the sum of thickness of each individual layer. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.