This study shows that the bulk lifetime in 95 mum thick p-type dendritic web silicon solar cells is a strong function of bulk resistivity. The higher the resistivity, the greater the bulk lifetime. This behavior is explained on the basis of dopant-defect interaction, which increases the lifetime limiting trap concentration with the addition of dopant atoms. Model calculations show that in the absence of doping dependence of bulk lifetime (tau), similar to2 Omega cm web should give the best cell efficiency for bulk lifetimes below 30 mus. However, strong doping dependence of bulk lifetime in p-web cells shifts the optimum resistivity front 2 to 15 Omega cm. Bulk lifetime in the as-grown web material was found to be less than I lis for all the resistivities. After the cell processing which involves phosphorus gettering, aluminum gettering, and SiN induced hydrogen passivation of defects, the bulk lifetime increased to 6.68, 11, 31 and 68.9 mus in 0.62, 1.37, 6.45 and 15 Omega cm p-type web material, respectively. Therefore, cell process induced recovery of lifetime in web is doping dependent, which favors high resistivity. Solar cells fabricated on 95 gm thick web silicon by a manufacturable process involving screen-printing and belt-line processing gave 14.5% efficient 4 cm(2) cells on 15 Omega cm resistivity. This represents a record efficiency for such a thin manufacturable screen-printed cell on a low-cost PV grade Si ribbon that requires no wafering or etching.