Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a promising semiconductor material with a great variety of applications. Compared to undoped ZnO, impurity-doped ZnO has a lower resistivity and better stability. With this aim, Ga has been proposed as a dopant. In this study, the structural characteristics and surface morphology of ZnO films produced by PEMOCVD at a substrate temperature of 250 degrees C on the c-plane (001) of sapphire were investigated. Doping was realized with 1, 3, 5 and 10 wt.% of Ga-2(AA)(3) in the precursor's mixture. At lower contents, Ga stimulates growth of (002) oriented textured films and the smallest FWHM was obtained as low as 0.17 degrees for ZnO:Ga with 1 wt.%. A change in preferential orientation as well as surface smoothing and roughness decreasing of the films were observed with further increasing Ga content in precursor's mixture. We assume a key role of Ga and note that such a feature would be beneficial for the application of ZnO thin films for formation of abrupt junctions in p-n device structures. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.