During quantum dot (QD) growth, substrate misorientation has been shown to play a role in the QD growth mechanism, changing their size, shape and density. Since various misorientation angles are used in production of solar cells, this work investigates QD enhanced GaAs p-i-n solar cells grown using the Stranski-Krastanov (SK) growth method on substrates misoriented either 2 degrees or 6 degrees off the (100) in the [1 (1) over bar0] direction. Results of this work show that 2 degrees misoriented samples have a lower critical thickness for InAs QD formation as compared to the 6 degrees misorientation: similar to 1.7 monolayers (ML) versus similar to 1.8 ML, respectively. In addition, the 6 degrees substrates showed a more uniform QD density and size distribution of QDs without significant QD coalescence. Photoluminescence of both substrate types shows that the QD ground state transitions are similar in wavelength. Results of the solar cells under one sun illumination show that QD cells grown on both 2 degrees and 6 degrees substrates have higher short-circuit current density than comparable cells without QD and maintain a high open-circuit voltage. The QD contributed short-circuit current density was normalized for QD size and density for both the 2 degrees and 6 degrees samples. Values of 360 A/cm(2) per cm(3) of InAs and 400 A/cm(2) per cm(3) of InAs were found for the 2 degrees and 6 degrees samples, respectively. For both substrate types, the reduced number of coalesced QDs promoted effective strain balancing, while the increased QD density lead to strong QD absorption. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.