Ohmic contacts produced by high‐energy pulsed laser beam alloying Au/Te/Au/n‐GaAs are investigated by micro Raman spectroscopy. The results are compared to those from furnace annealed ohmic contacts. For the furnace as well as for the laser annealed ohmic contacts, no evidence for a doping of the contact region is found in the Raman spectra. The presence of a highly disordered GaAs surface layer is observed for both types of contacts. In addition, after furnace processing a Ga2Te3layer is formed. These results are consistent with earlier Mo¨ssbauer studies. For the laser alloyed samples the results strengthen the role of a defective/disordered interface structure where conduction might occur by a resonant tunneling process involving localized gap states.