Transparent thin films of CdO:Ce has been deposited on to glass and silicon substrates by spray pyrolysis technique for various concentrations of cerium (2, 4, and 6 Vol.%). CdO:Ce films were characterized using different techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy(AFM) and optical properties. XRD analysis show that CdO films exhibit cubic crystal structure with (1 1 1) preferred orientation and the intensity of the peak increases with increasing's of Ce contain when deposited films on glass substrate, while for silicon substrate, the intensity of peaks decreases, the results reveal that the grain size of the prepared thin film is approximately (73.75-109.88) nm various with increased of cerium content. With a surface roughness of (0.871–16.2) nm as well as root mean square of (1.06-19.7) nm for glass substrate, while for silicon (84.79-107.48) nm, for a pure CdO and doped with Ce (2, 4, and 6 Vol.%). The 300-nm-thin CdO films showed that the optical energy band gap equal 2.6 eV, and increases with increasing doping until reaches a maximum value of 3.25 eV when doping levels 6 Vol.%.
