Special sequences of wet-chemical oxidation and etching steps were optimised with respect to the etching behaviour of differently oriented silicon to prepare very smooth silicon interfaces with excellent electronic properties on mono-and poly-crystalline substrates. Surface photovoltage (SPV) and photoluminescence (PL) measurements, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) investigations were utilised to develop wet-chemical smoothing procedures for atomically flat and structured surfaces, respectively. Hydrogen-termination as well as passivation by wet-chemical oxides were used to inhibit surface contamination and native oxidation during the technological processing. Compared to conventional pre-treatments, significantly lower micro-roughness and densities of surface states were achieved on monocrystalline Si(100), on evenly distributed atomic steps, such as on vicinal Si(111), on silicon wafers with randomly distributed upside pyramids, and on poly-crystalline EFG (Edge-defined Film-fed-Growth) silicon substrates. The recombination loss at a-Si:H/c-Si interfaces prepared on c-Si substrates with randomly distributed upside pyramids was markedly reduced by an optimised wet-chemical smoothing procedure, as determined by PL measurements. For amorphous-crystalline hetero-junction solar cells (ZnO/a-Si:H(n)/ c-Si(p)/ Al) with textured c-Si substrates the smoothening procedure results in a significant increase of short circuit current I-sc, fill factor and efficiency eta. The scatter in the cell parameters for measurements on different cells is much narrower, as compared to conventional pre-treatments, indicating more well-defined and reproducible surface conditions prior to a-Si:H emitter deposition and/ or a higher stability of the c-Si surface against variations in the a-Si:H deposition conditions. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.