The current transport through Schottky contacts on wide band gap semiconductors (GaN and SiC) was studied on nanoscale by conductive atomic force microscopy. Two very different metal-semiconductor systems were investigated: (i) a uniform (∼5 nm thick) Pt contact on GaN, and (ii) a discontinuous contact formed by self-assembled Au nanoclusters on SiC. The local current-voltage (I-V) measurements allowed to demonstrate the “laterally inhomogeneous” electrical behavior of the Pt/GaN contact, which was formed by a distribution of nanoscale patches with different barrier heights. This behavior was explained in terms of the inhomogeneities of the Pt/GaN interface and/or of the electrically active defects present in the GaN epilayer. The standard deviation of the local barrier height histogram (σΦ) was correlated with the dependence of the ideality factor (n) on temperature, deduced from conventional I-V …