A low cost additive-free acid texturing process for large area commercial diamond-wire-sawn multicrystalline silicon solar cells

•An additive-free acid texturing process is demonstrated for the DWS multi-crystalline silicon wafers in solar cell manufacturing industry.•These textured wafers have similar optoelectronic and electrical properties as that of industrial additive-based acid textured DWS wafers.•The reported additive-free textured cells have similar batch average efficiency to that of the additive-based acid textured cells in industrial production.•Further optimization of fabrication conditions, our proposed textured wafers will possibly increase the cell efficiency.•Proposed texturing scheme cut-down nearly 60% of chemical cost of additive-based acid texturing process presently used in industry.