ZnO thin-films are grown on a p-Si(111) substrate by RF sputtering. The effects of growth temperature and O2 mixture ratio on the ZnO films are investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and roomtemperature photoluminescence (PL) measurements. All the grown ZnO thin films show a strong preferred orientation along the c-axis, with an intense ultraviolet emission centered at 377 nm. However, when O2 is mixed with the sputtering gas, the half width at half maximum (FWHM) of the XRD peak increases and the deep-level defect-related emission PL band becomes pronounced. In addition, an n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction diode is fabricated by photolithographic processes and characterized using its current-voltage (I-V) characteristic curve and photoresponsivity. The fabricated n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction diode exhibits typical rectifying I-V characteristics, with turn-on voltage of about 1.1 V and ideality factor of 1.7. The ratio of current density at ± 3 V of the reverse and forward bias voltage is about 5.8 × 103, which demonstrates the switching performance of the fabricated diode. The photoresponse of the diode under illumination of chopped with 40 Hz white light source shows fast response time and recovery time of 0.5 msec and 0.4 msec, respectively.