We have investigated the temperature-dependent current voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) in the temperature range of 280-415 K. The barrier height for the Au/n-type GaAs SBDs from the I-V and C-V characteristics have varied from 0.901 eV to 0.963 eV (I-V) and 1.234 eV to 0.967 eV (C-V), and the ideality factor (n) from 1.45 to 1.69 in the temperature range 280-415 K. The conventional Richardson plots are found to be linear in the temperature range measured. Both the ln(Io/T-2) versus (kT)(-1) and ln(Io/T-2) versus (nkT)(-1) plots gives a straight line corresponding to activation energies 0.773 eV and 0.870 eV, respectively,A Phi(b0) versus 1/T plot was drawn to obtain evidence of a Gaussian distribution of the BHs, and values of Phi(b0) = 1.071 eV and sigma(0) = 0.094 V for the mean BH and zero-bias standard deviation have been obtained from this plot. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.