Zn0.85Sb0.1O films were synthesized by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and photoluminescence (PL) measurements were carried out to evaluate the microstructure of the films. These films exhibited a single-phase hexagonal structure with (0 0 2) preferred orientation, despite the high Sb content of similar to 10% and the resulting large lattice distortion in the films. Moreover, the films showed semiconductor properties with high resistivity of similar to 10(4) Omega, cm, which was possibly related to a compensation of intrinsic defects. Compared with the undoped ZnO, a reduction in the band gap by 40 meV was clearly observed in ultraviolet-visible absorption spectra. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.