We report the growth and characterization of ZnSe films prepared on ZnO/Si(1 1 1) templates. It was found that the as-deposited ZnSe films are highly oriented with zinc blende structure, and the preferred crystal orientation is (1 1 1). The small X-ray diffraction (XRD) full-wide-half-maximum (FWHM) also suggests that the crystal quality of the deposited ZnSe films is reasonably good. From temperature dependent photoluminescence (PL) measurements, it was found that exciton binding energy, E-B, equals 25.6 meV for the as-prepared ZnSe/ZnO/Si(1 1 1) samples. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.