solved the conducting layers are preferably composed of materials which are already used and accepted within fabrication areas this would allow fabs to build their own verification standards using their existing processing equipment and mask sets thereby eliminating cross contamination risk which would occur from commercially produced standards in a preferred embodiment of the invention a tungsten silicide wsi x feature is patterned on a titanium or titanium nitride layer on a silicon wafer according to the following process flow step 26 deposit or grow a silicon dioxide layer thereon by industry standard processes such as thermal oxidation lpcvd or pecvd by way of example preferably of thickness greater than 500 a to promote adhesion of titanium and to prevent a chemical reaction between titanium and silicon the silicon dioxide layer must have a thickness of sufficient magnitude to prevent titanium silicon reduction reactions from penetrating through the silicon dioxide the minimum thickness depends on the thickness of the ti layer step 28 deposit by sputtering or chemical vapor deposition a ti or tin layer of sufficient thickness to serve as an etch stop for wsi x etch preferably between 500 and 5000 a thickness step 30 deposit by chemical vapor deposition a wsi x film which can be patterned with high fidelity preferably between 500 and 3000 a thickness step 32 pattern and etch the wsi x film stopping on the.