We investigate the surface passivation of crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers that are textured with random upright pyramids and passivated with amorphous silicon nitride (SiN). Over a large range of refractive indices = 1.89–4.1 at 632 nm), we achieve a low upper limit to surface recombination velocity on textured samples ( < 10 cm s at an excess carrier density of 10 cm . We also find that is higher for textured surfaces than for planar surfaces when the NH:SiH ratio is high (and, hence, is low). For example, when passivated by an N-rich SiN deposited with NH:SiH = 4.7 = 1.83), the vertices and/or edges of the pyramidal texture drives a 3.5 times increase in . As the NH :SiH ratio decreases (and increases), of the textured surfaces decreases rapidly and approaches the same as the planar surfaces when NH :SiH ≤ 0.7 ( ≥ 2.3). By contrast, we find that irrespective of NH:SiH ratio, and, therefore, is equivalent on {100} and {111} planar surfaces. The results indicate that the increase in of the textured surfaces is related to the presence of vertices and/or edges of the pyramids rather than to the presence of {111}-orientated facets. By depositing varying degrees of corona charge on the samples, it is found that the increase in recombination introduced by 1) a higher NH:SiH ratio and 2) the vertices and edges of the pyramids is primarily due to an increase in defect density rather than a decrease in SiN charge density.