We report on the surface passivation of inverted pyramidally textured (intex) and isotextured (isotex) crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers by amorphous silicon nitride (SiNx)and amorphous silicon (a-Si:H).Three SiNx films and one a-Si:H are examined by varying precursor gas flow ratio (NH3:SiH4) in a microwave/radio-frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition reactor.The surface recombination velocity (SRV) is found to depend on the properties of the passivating layers and the silicon surface morphology.When passivated by N-rich SiNx (n =1.85),SRV increases significantly as the surface becomes less planar (i.e.,for a higher proportion of {111}surface area for intex and a higher texture feature for isotex).When passivated by Si rich SiNx (n =2.0 and 2.5),the dependence of SRV on surface morphology tends to be weak.When passivated by a-Si:H,the recombination behaves differently at the intex and isotex surfaces.Whereas SRV of intex decreases strongly with an increase in the {111} proportion of surface area,SRV of isotex is constant with texture depth.Possible causes for the behaviour of intex are (i) there are twice the dangling bonds at a {100}surface than at the {111} surface;and (ii) epitaxial growth at a-Si:H/c-Si interface,which is known to be detrimental to the surface passivation of {100} rather than {111}surfaces.Annealing of the samples suggests the second cause is more likely to be responsible for the behaviour of intex samples.