AbstractCuInS₂ has emerged during recent years as a good candidate to substitute CuInSe₂ as polycrystalline absorber in thin film solar cells, mainly due to its direct band gap energy of 1.5 eV. In this study, absorber layers of both Cu-rich and Cu-poor types have been grown on soda-lime glass substrates by proper selection of the deposition parameters. The morphology and the optical properties of the resulting CuInS₂ films were studied in dependence of the deposition order of the elemental constituents: alternate evaporation of the precursors, simultaneous deposition of the three constituents and sequential modulation of the evaporation fluxes.