In the present work, stratified WO3/ZnO thin films have been prepared by simple chemical spray pyrolysis technique. The structural, morphological, compositional and photoelectrocatalytic properties of the stratified WO3/ZnO thin films are studied. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) study shows that, both short circuit current (I-sc) and open circuit voltage (V-oc) are (I-sc = 1.023 mA and V-oc = 0.980 V) relatively high at 40 ml spraying quantity of ZnO solution on pre-deposited WO3 thin films. XRD analysis reveals that stratified WO3/ZnO thin films are polycrystalline with monoclinic and hexagonal crystal structures for WO3 and ZnO respectively. The specific surface area of the stratified WO3/ZnO thin film is found to be 48.12 m(2) g(-1). The enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity of stratified WO3/ZnO is mainly due to the suppressing the recombination of photo generated electron-hole pairs. The end result shows that the degradation percentage of phthalic acid (PA) using stratified WO3/ZnO photo electrode has reached 63.63% after 320 min. under sunlight illumination. The amount of mineralization of phthalic acid is studied with the help of chemical oxygen demand (COD) measurement. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.