In recent years, research on epitaxial growth for thin film crystalline silicon solar cells has gained in importance due to the alarming feedstock shortage of electronic grade polysilicon. This work concentrates on the epitaxial growth of the emitter, as a replacement for emitter diffusion, on top of an epitaxially grown base. The main advantage of emitter formation by CVD is more controllable doping profile, which gives the opportunity to form an excellent front surface field, leading to high open-circuit voltages. in this paper, the doping profile and thickness of the epitaxial layers are optimized. A solar cell process including a light trapping mechanism resulted in solar cell efficiencies close to 15%. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.