SnS films have been prepared by a novel two-stage process. It involved sputtering of Sn film on glass substrate and sulfurization of the thin metallic tin precursor layers in a vacuum furnace. The X-ray diffraction results showed that the SnS layers had orthorhombic structure and (0 4 0) preferential growth is more and more obvious with the increase of sulfurization time. The SnS film obtained by this work shows high optical absorption efficiency, and the film has a direct optical band gap of about 1.3 eV. The films show p-type conductivity and the resistivity of SnS film decreased obviously under illumination. (c) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.