Oxide-mediated epitaxy (OME) is a highly promising means of forming epitaxial CoSi2. In this work, various chemical treatments were applied to grow chemical oxides on heavily doped Si substrates and narrow width active region. The effects of the treatment on the OME performance were investigated. Both the thickness and the quality of the oxide varied with the chemicals and dopants, resulting in various levels of junction leakage current. The junction leakage current was minimized by choosing the most favorable chemical treatment and optimizing the annealing temperature. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.