Nanostructuring has been projected as an appropriate technique to make thin silicon an efficient absorber. Although nano-textured surfaces have shown an anti-reflective effect, their surface passivation properties are found to be generally worse compared to standard micro-textured surfaces. Here, a novel front surface design has been proposed and simulated to balance the photonic and electronic effects together. ZrO2 based texturing has been used along with SiC-based front surface passivation for the suppression of interface recombination and improvement of open-circuit voltage (V-OC). The device under investigation shows record V-OC of 662 mV in the sub-10 mu m-thick rear contact silicon solar cell. The presence of ZrO2 and SiC significantly improves the optical as well as the electrical behavior of the device. The device exhibits external quantum efficiency (EQE) > 81% in the spectrum range of 320-720 nm wavelength spectrum with a maximum of 95.6% at wavelength 560 nm. These improvements lead to 15.7% efficient rear contact silicon solar cell, in the sub-10 mu m-thick regime. In second approach power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 21.6% has been achieved, by introducing the same front surface design to a 300 mm thick device. All the simulations have been done using calibrated software program in ATLAS device simulation. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.