Due to the non-homogeneous defect structure of the multicrystalline silicon material, the distribution of the electrical parameters in monolithic multicrystalline silicon solar cell depends on the quality of the material. In this paper, the distribution of the electrical parameters in monolithic multicrystalline silicon solar cell is investigated. The experimental evidence suggests that gettering and silicon nitride passivation can enhance the uniformity of the electrical parameters in monolithic multicrystalline silicon solar cell, even if impurity gettering is not effective when the dislocation density is above a threshold value of about 10(6) cm(-2). Response to gettering of different regions of a multicrystalline silicon wafer is different. The experiments give us some hints that when we dice a large area multicrystalline silicon solar cell made by the mid and low quality multicrystalline silicon into small pieces needed by application, we should add some special process such as phosphorus gettering. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.