112 and a top surface 128 of the insulating oxide 113 it can be appreciated that such excess rusi x can also be deposited in recessed locations on the substrate or even on tools that are used during the deposition process generally the excessive ruthenium silicide 124 has to be removed from the substrate assembly 110 prior subsequent processing steps however prior to the present invention there is no known method of effectively removing ruthenium silicide which has substantially limited the application of using rusi x in semiconductor fabrication as described in greater detail above the present invention provides a novel method of selectively removing rusi x from a substrate surface without affecting other layers of material deposited on the substrate surface 114 in particular the method comprises exposing the substrate surface containing ruthenium silicide to a hypochlorite salt based solution preferably the solution is applied to the substrate surface using a well known immersion or spray technique after exposing the substrate to the hypochlorite solution for a predetermined amount of time the solution will dissolve the ruthenium silicide without attacking other material on the substrate surface in one embodiment the hypochlorite salt based solution comprises a 11 potassium hypochlorite solution combined with a 49 hydrofluoric acid and d i water in a 3 1 50 ratio respectively in particular the substrate surface is preferably immersed to the.