Electrical properties of crystalline silicon wafers used for photovoltaics are degraded by metallic impurity atoms. Such atoms are introduced during the crystal growth or during the processing steps needed to prepare solar cells. External gettering treatments such as phosphorus diffusion from a POCl3 source or Al-Si alloying are needed to restore or to improve the bulk electrical properties of the material. Monocrystalline wafers can be easily ugraded by such treatments. In multicrystalline silicon wafers, external gettering by phosphorus diffusion, as well as by AI-Si alloying are efficient, provided the temperature does not exceed 900degreesC. Longer treatments (2-4h) are needed in order to increase the minority carrier diffusion length beyond the wafer thickness. So longer times are necessary to dissolve metallic atom containing precipitates. However, if the major part of the wafer is neatly improved, some regions containing dislocation tangles are poorly modified. In such regions, impurities could be involved in the formation of silicates which cannot be dissolved during the gettering treatment. Nevertheless, external gettering treatments are able to clean efficiently single crystalline and multicrystalline silicon wafers, provided the oxygen concentration and the defect density are not too high and are homogeneously distributed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.