Cadmium Sulfide CdS thin films were deposited by chemical bath deposition technique using ethanolarnine as complexing agent instead of commonly used ammonia to avoid its toxicity and volatility during film preparation. In order to investigate the film growth mechanism samples were prepared with different deposition times. A set of substrates were dropped in the same bath and each 30 minutes a sample is withdrawn from the bath, by this way all the obtained films were grown in the same condition. The films structure was analyzed by X rays diffraction. In early stage of growth the obtained films are amorphous, with increasing the deposition time, the films exhibits a pure hexagonal structure with (101) preferential orientation. The film surface morphology was studied by atomic force microscopy. From these observations we concluded that the early growth stage starts in the 3D Volmer-Weber mode, followed by a transition to the Stransky-Krastanov mode with increasing deposition time. The critical thickness of this transition is 120 nm. CdS quantum dots were formed at end of the film growth. The optical transmittance characterization in the UV-Visible range shows that the prepared films have a high transparency ranging from 60 to 80% for photons having wavelength greater than 600 nm. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.