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 solution for approximately 3 minutes to effectively dissolve ruthenium silicide that is approximately 1000 u00e5 thick however the immersion time may vary in other embodiments depending on the thickness of the rusix and its location on the substrate surface as fig3 shows the excess ruthenium silicide is selectively removed from the bottom surface 126 of the substrate 112 and the top surface 128 of the insulating oxide layer 113 following the application of the etching process of the preferred embodiment advantageously the present invention provides a method of selectively removing ruthenium silicide from a substrate surface without requiring additional masking steps to protect the non rusi x surfaces as it can be appreciated the elimination of the masking steps reduces the overall manufacturing cost.