Highly (0 0 0 2) oriented ZnO thin films were synthesized on the Al/Si(1 0 0) substrates by DC reactive magnetron sputtering. Based on the prepared ZnO thin films, Schottky diodes were successfully fabricated, which were designed with different structures, one is an integrated Schottky diode (ISD), and the other is a conventional Schottky diode. The two kinds of Schottky diodes show different I-V characteristics, and the ISD has a better I-V performance. Contact of the ISD showed -0.014 muA leakage current to 1V reverse bias, and ideality factor is 1.5, while the conventional one showed -0.056 muA leakage current to 1V reverse bias, and ideality factor is 1.9. Second ion mass spectroscopy measurements suggested that the ISD effectively reduced the oxygen absorption and the zinc segregation in the Au/ZnO interfaces, which may partly account for its better performance. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.