In the production process of multicrystalline silicon solar cells, diamond wire sawn (DWS) cutting technology attracts wide attention because of its advantages of high cutting speed, high precision and less loss of raw materials. But the traditional acid etching technology cannot match the shallow damage layer formed on the surface of diamond wire sawn cut multicrystalline silicon wafer to make the texture surface. On the contrary, the metal-catalyzed chemical etching method owns the advantages of simple operation, controllable structure and easy to form the structure with high aspect ratio, indicating a wide range of application on diamond wire sawn cut multicrystalline silicon wafer. This paper systematically summarizes the work of the etching mechanisms and the structures of textures by different metal catalysts in the process of making texture surface, and deeply discusses the single and composite catalytic etching process of Ag and Cu, the structure of texture surface, and the performance of solar cells. Finally, the problems of metal-catalyzed chemical etching on the surface of diamond wire sawn cut multicrystalline silicon are analyzed, and their future research directions are prospected.