We studied the effect of deposition temperature on the hydrogen distribution and the passivation performance of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) coated crystalline silicon (c-Si) heterojunctions as a model of high efficiency solar cell structures. Nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) was employed to obtain hydrogen depth profiles of the heterojunctions prepared at temperatures from 80 to 180 degrees C. The implied open circuit voltage (i-V-OC) and carrier lifetime monotonically increased with increasing deposition temperature in the as-deposited samples. NRA clarified that the hydrogen concentration (C-H) at the a-Si:H/c-Si interface and in the a-Si:H layer decreased with deposition temperature. The hydrogen concentration around the interface was roughly 3 x 10(21) cm(-3) for the sample deposited at 180 degrees C. The NRA results are supplemented by optical constants obtained with spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). At higher growth temperature, larger refractive indices and extinction coefficients were confirmed by SE analysis, suggesting that fewer hydrogen atoms are incorporated into the a-Si:H layers prepared at higher growth temperature. Furthermore, the passivation performance was enhanced by post deposition annealing (PDA) at 200 degrees C for 30 min. No significant change of the hydrogen distribution and optical constants was observed after PDA, suggesting that improved passivation is due to a local rearrangement of hydrogen at the molecular level that results in enhanced hydrogenation of dangling bonds.