The effects of ion-induced damage in n- and p-type GaAs and p-type InP exposed to inductively coupled plasma (ICP) Ar discharges were measured by diode ideality factor and barrier height measurements. At fixed RF chuck powers, the electrical characteristics of the diodes generally improve with increasing ICP source power because the incident ion energy is decreased. In the particular case of p-GaAs, the higher ion flux at high-ICP source power leads to a degradation in barrier height. Exposure time and ion energy have a stronger influence than ion flux in all three materials. The results are compared to those obtained with electron cyclotron resonance Ar plasmas and show the same basic trends. The clear result is that at moderate ICP source powers, the suppression of self-induced de bias on the powered electrode leads to a lower amount of ion damage to the semiconductors than for conventional reactive ion etch discharges.