In this work, we used isothermal close space (ICS) Te annealings in pure H-2 atmosphere for the tellurization of Mo oxide thin films. Differently to previous open tube tellurization annealings, ICS is expected to provide a higher Te vapor pressure because the chamber containing the Te source and the substrate is very small and semi-closed. Then, we used a relatively low temperature of 500 degrees C at which, according to the phase diagram, 2H phase should be stable. However, we observed that, in all cases, Mo oxide initially transformed to 1T' before reaching the equilibrium 2H phase. Highly oriented MoTe2 films with the [001] direction perpendicular to the surface were obtained in all samples. On the other hand, according our Xray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, we report shifts of 0.38/0.27 eV in the 3d emission of Te/Mo between the two different phases which probably have a chemical origin. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.