New preparation methods of electrical contacts have been developed to minimize their effect on Ge-Sb-Te thin films. Impedance spectroscopy technique has been used to extract the contributions of both electrical contacts and the material under investigation. Three different configurations of electrical contacts were investigated. The results show that the effect of the contacts disappears when silver paste is placed on the gold electrode only without touching and interacting with the Ge-Sb-Te film. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.