Polycrystalline cadmium sulfide (CdS) thin-films were deposited on glass substrate by chemical bath deposition (CBD) and vacuum evaporation (VE) techniques. VE-CdS films consisted primarily of hexagonal phase, whereas CBD US films containing primarily the cubic form. VE-grown films were shown to have better crystallinity than CBD-grown films. The grain size of the CBD films is smaller than the ones of VE films. VE-CdS films exhibited relatively high transmittance in the above-gap region and band gap compared with CBD films. However, CdTe solar cells with these low quality CBD-CdS layers yield higher and more stable characteristics. Current-voltage-temperature measurements showed that the current transport for both cells was controlled by both tunneling and interface recombination but the cells with CBD-CdS displayed less tunneling. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.