We report on the structural and optical properties of yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique and in situ crystallized at different substrate temperatures (T-s = 400 degrees C, 500 degrees C and 600 degrees C). Yttria-stabilized zirconia target of similar to 1 in. diameter (similar to 95% density) was fabricated by solid state reaction method for thin film deposition by PLD. The YSZ thin films were grown on an optically polished quartz substrates and the deposition time was 30 min for all the films. XRD analysis shows cubic crystalline phase of YSZ films with preferred orientation along < 111 >. The surface roughness was determined by AFM for the films deposited at different substrate temperatures. The nano-sized surface roughness is found to increase with the increase of deposition temperatures. For the optical analysis, a UV-vis-NIR spectrophotometer was used and the optical band gap of similar to 5.7 eV was calculated from transmittance curves. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.