Mo-doped zinc oxide (ZnO∶Mo) films were deposited with direct current magnetron sputtering on quartz substrates at room temperature. The effects of Mo doping content on the crystal structure, surface microstructure, optical properties and plasmon characteristics of the ZnO films were investigated with X-ray diffraction(XRD),atomic force microscopy (AFM),Spectrophotometer and Raman spectrometer. The XRD pattern reveals that pure ZnO film exhibits good crystallization and c-axis oriented while heavy doping leads to increasing film defects. That results decline the film crystalline quality. When Mo doping content exceeds 3.93 Wt%, the ZnO films transform c-axis oriented into amorphous. The AFM pattern indicates that the surface of amorphous MZO film is extraordinarily flat. The Rq is 498 pm. The transmittance spectra reveal that all samples have an average transmittance of 80% in the visible light range. The optical band gap energy (Eg) increases from 3.28 to 3.60 eV as the Mo doping content increase. The absorbance spectrum indicates that ZnO surface plasmon resonance absorbance perk moves to short-wavelength as the Mo doping content increase. The Raman spectrum suggests that heavy Mo doping make the Raman scattering intensity decrease significantly. This paper obtains amorphous ZnO thin film by Mo doping. That broadens the application field of ZnO thin film materials. Meanwhile, we study the effect of Mo doping concentration on ZnO thin films surface plasmon, which provides important reference value for the preparation of oxidized zinc base photonic devices.