“…For this annealed film, except for those of the silicon substrate, no other peaks were observed in the XRD pattern. A similar feature of three well-defined peaks in Raman spectrum has been reported for Ir silicide, IrSi 1.75 [6] ; therefore, we may attribute those three well-defined peaks to manganese silicide, and it indicates that Mn silicide is formed in the film during annealing at 500 • C. After annealing at a higher temperature of 600 • C, the two broad humps corresponding to amorphous Si disappeared, while the peaks corresponding to crystalline silicon and Mn silicide became more intense, indicating further crystallization of Si and Mn silicide in the film annealed at 600 • C. For this annealed film, several weak peaks corresponding to tetragonal Mn silicide, MnSi 1.73 , were observed in the XRD pattern, [3,11] which confirms our conclusion that the set of three well-defined Raman peaks located at 276, 301, and 318 cm −1 originates from Mn silicide, MnSi 1.73 . Figure 2 shows the Raman spectra of as-grown and annealed MnSi x thin films with a Mn concentration of 30%.…”