Rear contact terminals of integrated circuits have to satisfy electrical and mechanical requirements, such as low specific contact resistance, good adhesion to the substrate and good solderability with external elements. A new metallization scheme, made of sputtered Ni and Au layers, with the addition of a process step needed to ensure nickel silicide formation at low temperature, has been proposed for p-type silicon substrates and investigated in this work. Its electrical and structural properties have been compared with conventional Cr/Ni/Au and Ti/Ni/Au contacts, showing lower specific contact resistance values (ρc), an ohmic behaviour in the explored range of resistivity (i.e. 3 mΩ cm