Thin films of bismuth telluride grown by electrochemical deposition technique on conducting glass and Mo sheet substrates, were characterized for their structural, morphological, optical and compositional analysis. These studies revealed polycrystalline anisotropic and layered structure of these films with different compositional stoichiometry. In the present work electrochemical deposition of bismuth telluride thin films is studied as a dopant material in II-VI group absorber materials for photovoltaic application since it has a narrow optical energy band gap of 0.13 eV. In this deposition process different film growth parameters were optimized to get good quality of compositionally uniform bismuth telluride thin film. XRD analysis revealed a hexagonal symmetry with large e-axis lattice constants (Bi2Te3, Bi2+XTe3-X). (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.