The purpose of this work is the study of the correlation between the thickness of ZnO films doped by transition metals and their three-dimensional (3D) micromorphology. The as deposited ZnO films became more irregular surface hence the maximum value of Sq belong to as deposited ZnO films was in a bout of 0.1038 mm. The core roughness height Sk calculated as a difference between two extreme levels (maximal and minimal) of surface core, for ZnO films annealed at 500 ◦C have maximum value in a bout of 0.7325 mm. Since the surface kurtosis (Sku) of all sample’s films were above 7, therefore there were high peaks or valleys on the films surface and for as deposited CAZO films with value of with 8.883. The height distribution histograms shown that as deposited films respect to annealed films have more uniform distributions. The AZO films annealed at 500 ◦C have maximum value of DC conductivity in about 104.167 S cm− 1 . The value of log (dielectric loss tan(δ)) in AZO films have maximum value in range 0.05–0.15. As the frequency of incident photons were increased the polarization orientation were increased. Log AC conductivity values of films were shown almost linear behavior with increasing incident photons frequency that indicates conduction hopping is followed by a small polaron mechanism. AC conductivity values of as deposited AZO films in all frequencies have maximum value.