The morphology and structure of metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy grown homoepitaxial (1 0 0)ZnTe layers on high-quality substrates grown by the vertical gradient freezing method is reported. Growth below 350 °C leads to surface ridging along a in-plane direction of the epilayer, the morphology of samples grown at or above 350 °C depending instead on the Te:Zn ad-atom relative abundance. Nearly featureless morphology is observed for epilayers grown under Zn-rich or nearly stoichiometric surface conditions, whereas large pyramid-like hillocks develop on Te-rich surfaces, their density reaching up to 106–107 cm−2. Hillock formation is supposed to be driven by Te ad-atoms experiencing a Schwoebel potential barrier at the step edges around spiral centres, the latter ascribed to partial dislocation pairs bounding stacking faults (SFs). Analysis of the X-ray diffuse scattering intensity around the (4 0 0 …