We designed experiments to investigate the role of dislocation density on the performance of Schottky diodes fabricated on a GaN material grown conventionally and by pendeo-epitaxy. Devices of varying geometries were fabricated on low defect density GaN regions grown selectively via pendeo-epitaxy. In addition, corresponding devices were fabricated on the conventional GaN material with a high density of dislocations. Schottky diodes fabricated on pendeo-material showed nearly two orders of magnitude lower leakage current and displayed improved ideality factor, while diodes built on a conventional material displayed nonideal characteristics.