One promising strategy for achieving high-quality polycrystalline silicon thin-film solar cells on glass is based on low-temperature ion-assisted deposition for epitaxial thickening of a thin, large-grained seeding layer on glass. The crystal growth on the seeding layer is influenced by various factors, amongst which the crystal orientation of the grains plays a substantial role. In this paper we investigate how the electronic properties of solar cells grown on "ideal" seeding layers (Si wafers) are influenced by the crystallographic orientation of the substrate. The Si wafers are heavily doped p-type, ensuring that their contribution to the photogenerated current is small. The films grown on (100)-oriented Si substrates have a very low density of structural defects, while the films grown on (111)-oriented Si substrates display a high density of twin defects. The electronic properties of the thin-film solar cells were investigated by means of open-circuit voltage measurements as a function of the incident light intensity. The (100)-oriented diodes consistently exhibit a higher V-oc than the (111)-oriented diodes throughout the entire illumination range from 10(-3) to 10(3) Suns. We determine 7 mum as the bulk minority carrier diffusion length of the as-grown (100)-oriented Si film. A lower bound of 3 mum was found for the bulk minority carrier diffusion length in the as-grown (111)-oriented Si film. The performances of both types of solar cells were improved by hydrogenation in an ammonia plasma. At voltages around the 1-Sun maximum power point the improvement is due to a reduction of non-ideal current mechanisms. The diffusion length of the (100) diode remains unaffected by hydrogenation while the lower bound of the diffusion length of the (111) diode improves to 10 mum. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.