Previously, all known ohmic contacts to n-GaAs have involved a so-called "alloying" procedure which consists of melting a Au-Ge eutectic or Sn-based alloy films on GaAs. We describe here a new contact metallization scheme consisting of Pd/Ge/n-GaAs which requires sintering rather than melting in order to produce ohmic contacts. The sintering is done at temperatures ranging from 350°C, 15 min to 500°C, 2 h depending on the doping level of n-GaAs (1018-1016cm-3. For n-1016cm-3GaAs, a specific contact resistance of 3 × 10-4Ω.cm2was achieved. Sintering leads to the formation of some PdGe and intermetallics associated with the Pd/GaAs interaction, namely, PdAs2and PdGa. Ohmic behavior is attributed to a combination of the doping action of Ge (as donor) and fast in-diffusion kinetics of Pd. Sintered contacts to n+and p+GaAs (ND.A∼ 1018cm-8) made by Au, Pt, and Ti Were also investigated for ohmic behavior. Each of these three metals was at least partially effective in forming ohmic contacts to p+GaAs; the degree of effectiveness increases on going from Ti to Au to Pt. It is proposed that a reasonable guideline to follow When searching for ohmic contacts is Xm≳ Xdwhere Xmis the width of the metallurgical junction and Xdis the ideal depletion layer width. This condition should favor ohmic contacts by promoting a micro 3-dimensional current flow at the conductor-semiconductor interface and thereby maximizing field-emission probability.