Anisotropic etching of titanium silicide is essential if its low resistivity gate properties are to be utilized on scaled MOS devices. and plasmas, as well as ion milling, were used to etch composite titanium silicide/polysilicon films, with each displaying definite drawbacks. plasmas yielded rough etching and etch residue, presumably due to the high oxygen content of the silicide film and the relatively high selectivity (low oxide etch rate) of the etch. reactive ion etching and ion milling produced smooth etching but lacked the selectivity to stop on thin underlying gate oxides. A combination of these processes, however, provided successful anisotropic patterning of such structures. A nonselective, smooth etching reactive ion etch was used to etch through the silicide layer, followed by a higher selectivity plasma etch through the underlying polysilicon down to the thin gate oxide.