The current–voltage characteristics of Pd2Si based Schottky diodes on bothn‐ andp‐type silicon measured over a wide temperature range (52–295 K) have been interpreted on the basis of thermionic emission‐diffusion mechanism and the assumption of a Gaussian distribution of barrier heights. It is shown that while the occurrence of a distribution of barrier heights is responsible for the apparent decrease of the zero‐bias barrier height (&fgr;b0) and nonlinearity in the activation energy plot, the voltage dependence of the standard deviation causes the unusual increase of ideality factor (&eegr;) at low temperatures. Also, it is demonstrated that the forward bias shifts the mean barrier height towards the higher side and causes narrowing of the distribution as well. A simple method, involving the use of &fgr;b0vs 1/Tdata, is suggested to gather evidence for the occurrence of a Gaussian distribution of barrier heights and obtain values of mean barrier height and standard deviation. The experimental results correspond to a mean barrier height of 0.80 V, standard deviation 0.05 V, and ideality factor 1.21 for Pd2Si based Schottky barriers onn‐type silicon; these values forp‐type silicon are 0.38 V, 0.03 V, and 1.07, respectively. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.