Nanocrystalline zinc sulfide thin films were prepared on glass substrates by chemical bath deposition method using aqueous solutions of zinc chloride, thiourea ammonium hydroxide along with non-toxic complexing agent trisodium citrate in alkaline medium at 80 • C. The effect of deposition time and annealing on the properties of ZnS thin films was investigated by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, optical transmittance spectroscopy and four-point probe method. The X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the samples exhibited cubic sphalerite structure with preferential orientation along 2 0 0 direction. Scanning electron microscopy micrographs revealed uniform surface coverage, UV-Vis (300 nm to 800 nm) spectrophotometric measurements showed transparency of the films (transmittance ranging from 69 % to 81 %), with a direct allowed energy band gap in the range of 3.87 eV to 4.03 eV. After thermal annealing at 500 • C for 120 min, the transmittance increased up to 87 %. Moreover, the electrical conductivity of the deposited films increased with increasing of the deposition time from 0.35 × 10 −4 Ω·cm −1 to 2.7 × 10 −4 Ω·cm −1 .