The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics on Al/p-Si (1 0 0) Schottky barrier diodes in the temperature range 100-300 K were carried out. We have tried to determine some intrinsic and contact properties such as barrier heights, ideality factor, series resistance, and carrier concentrations. The apparent barrier height and the ideality factor calculated by using thermionic emission (TE) theory were found to be strongly temperature dependent. Evaluation of forward I-V data reveals a decrease in the zero-bias barrier height (ΦB0), but an increase in the ideality factor (n) with decrease in temperature. From the reverse-bias I-V graphs, it is found that the experimental carrier density (NA) values have increased with increasing temperature. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.