► An on chip ZnO thin film varistor for the ESD protection of LED is proposed. ► ZnO thin films with low-temperature PDA have good nonlinear varistor properties. ► The proposed devices will enhance the ESD protection from 750V to 2kV. In this work, an on top sputtered varistor-like ZnO thin film is deposited and studied which is light emitting diodes (LEDs) fabrication process compatible. Apply this simplify structure, the extra sintered ZnO varistor which is essentially attached on the plastic circuit board (PCB) together with the conventional LED can be omitted. The well known Electric Static Discharge (ESD) protective junction submount and Conductor Insulator Semiconductor (CIS) submount for the flip chip LEDs application can be also negligible. The grown ZnO passivated LED chips were followed by low temperature post deposition annealing treatments (PDA) to enhance the correspondent electrode adhesive property. The resulted current–electric field (I–E) characteristics showed out a good nonlinear property to accomplish high ESD handling capability. In the demonstrated LEDs application, the proposed devices are shown to have the obvious advantage of enhancing the correspondent ESD reliability from 750V to 2kV and with the high yield rated of 92% as well.