Al-doped ZnO (AZO) has practical applications in the industry for thermoelectric generation, owing to its nontoxicity, low-cost and stability at high temperatures. In this study, AZO thin films with high quality were deposited on BK7 glass substrates at room-temperature by direct current reactive magnetron sputtering using Zn-Al alloy target. The deposited thin films were annealed at various temperatures ranging from 623 K to 823 K with a space of 50 K. It is found that the absolute value of Seebeck coefficient of AZO thin film annealed at 723 K increases stably with increasing of measuring temperature and reaches a value of similar to 60 mu V/K at 575 K. After that, Al-doping content was varied to further optimize the thermoelectric properties of AZO thin films. The power factor of AZO thin films with Al content of 3 wt% increased with increase of measuring temperature and the maximum power factor of 1.54 x 10(-4)W m(-1)K(-2) was obtained at 550 K with the maximum absolute values of Seebeck coefficient of 99 mu V/K, which is promising for high temperature thermoelectric application. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.