Maskless Mesoscale Materials Deposition (M3D (TM)) is a new direct write technique, which is versatile enough to deposit a large variety of precursors and colloidal suspensions. It is a simple and convenient process for rapid prototyping of structures and components. This maskless deposition method operates in air and at room temperature. In this study, a glycerol based polymeric precursor was used for depositing ZnO thin films on surface modified glass substrates. The parameters for deposition using (MD)-D-3 (TM) were thoroughly examined and optimized. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.