Abstract The introduction of ozonated deionized water (DIO3 water) to the silicon wafer wet cleaning process has attracted interest from the photovoltaic industry. In this work, a simple and cost-effective approach to fabricate submicron-texture multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafer is presented using Ag metal-catalyzed chemical etching (MCCE) in DIO3/HF solution, where DIO3 was used as a hole injecting agent. The submicron-texture was successfully applied to fabricate efficient mc-Si PERC solar cells with an average efficiency of 20.31%, which is 0.58%abs higher than those with an acid micron-texture and exceeds those with conventional MCCE submicron-textures using H2O2 as the hole injecting agent. We demonstrated that using DIO3 as a hole injection agent in metal-catalyzed chemical etching is feasible. This novel MCCE approach is simple, low-cost, and ecofriendly, making it an attractive alternative to conventional MCCE methods for use in industrial-scale production.