In this work, CuO thin films were deposited by sol gel spin-coating technique on microscope glass substrates. Copper acetate was used as the starting salt material source, ethanol as solvent and monoethanolamine as stabiliser. The as-coated films were preheated at 300 oC for 10 min and then annealed using two different temperatures. As the annealing temperature was increased from 500 oC to 600 oC, along with thickness, an improvement of the structural properties was concluded from XRD and SEM analyses. I-V characteristics of the films corroborated this result and showed existence of a normal Ohmic behaviour of these films. The average crystallite size estimated from XRD analysis was found to increase from 28.06 to 37.68 nm with the increase of both thickness and annealing temperature. On the other hand, the two parameters dislocation density and strain followed an opposite trend and decreased from 1.27 to 0.704 (1015 lines /m2) and from 1.29 × 10−3 to 0.961 × 10−3, respectively

Keywords: CuO thin films, Sol gel, Structural properties, I-V characteristics