CdS thin films were grown by fast evaporation technique combined with substrate rotation. The source evaporation temperature was maintained at 600 degrees C and the substrate temperature at 350 degrees C with background pressure of 1.0 m Torr. The substrates were corning glass 2947 with dimension of 1 in. x1 in. rotate at 500 rpm during the growth. In order to verify the quality of the CdS films, the samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical measurements. The films shown a flat uniformity thickness with growth rate of similar to 3.5 nm/s, the orientation was in the cubic-(1 1 1) and hexagonal-(0 0 2) plane in dependence of the growth time, grain size similar to 5 nm, roughness uniformity similar to 2.7 nm, transmittance in the visible region spectrum similar to 80%, energy band gap between 2.39 and 2.42 eV and short circuit photocurrent density (J(SC)) losses in the CdS films of 4.7 mA/cm(2). (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V.