A promising new technique in photochemical vapour deposition is the introduction of excimer lamps as vacuum-UV photon sources. Here we report the application of excimer lamp chemical vapour deposition for silicon oxide thin film deposition. The high energy photons (lambda = 172 nm) from an Xe2* excimer lamp irradiate a gas mixture of Ar diluted with N2O and SiH4. The dependence of growth rate and film properties on the substrate temperature and the window-to-substrate distance is reported. Our results demonstrate that this method is appropriate for deposition of dense and adherent films at substrate temperatures as low as 100-degrees-C independently of the window-substrate distance. These results promise well for technological applications due to the possibility of depositing onto large areas even on temperature-sensitive materials and of coating surfaces of irregular forms.