Results on isothermal closed space sublimation (ICSS) of ZnTe using different experimental conditions are presented. Wide ranges of exposure and purge times were used to study the properties of the adsorption and desorption processes in this material. Moreover, the atmosphere and the type of substrates were also varied. It was found that epitaxial ZnTe layers are always obtained in either [11 1] or [10 0] oriented GaAs substrates regardless the used gas atmosphere. In contrast, samples grown on [10 0] oriented Si substrates showed powder-like X-ray diffraction features with a strong preferential orientation in the [1 1 1] direction. In both kinds of substrates, there were obtained growth rates considerably larger than one monolayer per cycle for samples grown with large exposure times to the sources. The influence of different process like gas absorption in the substrate holder, gas transport in the substrate compartment and multilayer adsorption on these large growth rates is discussed. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.