We investigated the influence of indium tin oxide (ITO) sputtering damage to various types of amorphous silicon (a-Si) passivation films deposited by catalytic chemical vapor deposition. Intrinsic (i-) a-Si, n-type (n-) a-Si/i-a-Si, and p-type (p-) a-Si/i-a-Si stacked films were prepared on crystalline Si, and ITO was sputtered at various temperatures and RF powers, followed by post-annealing at 200 degrees C. Effective minority carrier lifetime (T-eff) of almost all the samples decreases drastically after sputtering, while T-eff of the samples with ITO sputtered at room temperature recovers significantly by post-annealing. Annealing before sputtering and sputtering at lower RF power leads to more effective recovery of T-eff The samples with ITO sputtered to an n-a-Si/i-a-Si stack show large T-eff recovery, while the samples with ITO sputtered to a p-a-Si/i-a-Si stack show much smaller T-eff recovery. T-eff recovery after ITO sputtering thus depends on the types of a-Si passivation films, which may be related to the modification of band alignment by the existence of ITO. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.