This paper describes the characteristics of surface acoustic wave (SAW) ultraviolet (UV) sensors fabricated from a ZnO thin film using the third harmonic mode. A ZnO thin film was used as an active layer for UV detection, and a piezoelectric layer was sputtered using magnetron sputtering. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and photoluminescence (PL) spectra showed that the ZnO sputtered onto Si(100) was highly (002)-oriented and had good optical properties. The two-port SAW resonator was based on an inter-digital transducer (IDT)/ZnO/Si structure and was fabricated and exposed under UV light at a wavelength of 380 nm. As a result, under a UV intensity of 3 mW/cm(2), the SAW UV sensor was greatly shifted by 400 kHz at the third harmonic mode compared to a frequency shift of 10 kHz in the fundamental mode. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.