The present paper reports on the properties of liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE) silicon layers grown on monocrystalline highly resistive (1 0 0)-oriented float zone (FZ) silicon substrates. All layers were grown in an indium/gallium solution saturated with Si at temperatures near 920 degrees C. For the optimisation of layer properties for solar cell applications, parameters such as growth rate and Ga concentration of the In solution were varied. Hall measurements, X-ray spectroscopy, mechanical surface profiling (Dektak) and a lifetime analyser were used to characterise the 100-200 mu m thick LPE layers.