Hexagonal barium ferrite (BaM) thin films have been prepared by sol-gel technique involving spin coating and annealing in air. Different ratios of Ba to Fe, different annealing temperatures and different annealing time are explored. X-ray diffraction shows that the films have been epitaxially grown on the sapphire (001) plane with [100] direction of BaM parallel to [110] of Al(2)O(3), and the c-axes of them being parallel, while magnetic measurements show magnetically anisotropic loops with in-plane and out-of-plane intrinsic coercivity of 87.5 kA/m and 230.8 kA/m, respectively. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.