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Stacks of aluminum oxide and silicon nitride are frequently used in silicon photovoltaics. In this Letter, we demonstrate that hydrogenated aluminum nitride can be an alternative to this dual-layer stack. Deposited on 1 ohm cm p-type FZ silicon, very low effective surface recombination velocities of 8 cm/s could be reached after firing at 820 °C. This excellent passivation is traced back to a high density of fixed charges at the interface of approximately -1 × 1012 cm-2 and a very low interface defect density below 5 × 1010 eV-1 cm-2. Furthermore, spectral ellipsometry measurements reveal that these aluminum nitride layers have ideal optical properties for use as anti-reflective coatings