To prevent the loss of oxygen vacancies in aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films at high temperature process, and to enhance the thermal stability a protective tin oxide (TO) over layer has been realized. To investigate the protective nature of doped tin oxide layer, fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) and antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) layers have also been coated on AZO layer. Then, to confirm its stability of opto-electrical properties under high temperature process, structural, optical and electrical studies of AZO single layer, TO/AZO, FTO/AZO and ATO/AZO double layered films were carried out before and after annealing and the results are reported. The XRD results showed that the crystalline nature of double layered films remains unchanged, even after the heat treatment. The UV results depicted that, in all the double layer films the transmission spectra remain unchanged or changed negligibly after annealing, indicating the thermal stability of double layered films. The photoluminescence results also strongly supported the improvement in the thermal stability of double layered films. The electrical studies suggested that the double layered films exhibited better electrical resistivity with bare AZO films. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.