Diamond, known for more than 200 years, has been a dream for the device engineers due to its unique material properties. It was identified as carbon in 1796, but synthesized in 1954. The main reason behind this is the difficulties to exploit these properties due to the cost and scarcity of large natural diamonds, and the fact that diamond was only available in the form of stones or grit. To overcome these problems, researchers realized that in order to form diamond, conditions are needed where diamond is in a more stable phase. The chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of diamond is one of the most popular, technically well understood and established, as well as commercially viable methods for synthesizing diamond. The first reproducable synthesis of artificial diamond, using a process requiring high temperature and high pressure was reported by General Electric Company in 1955. CVD was then used for the first time for synthesizing diamond by Eversole in 1962.

CVD is a process in which gaseous precursors are introduced into a reactor and a solid is deposited on a usually hot substrate due to chemical reactions between the precursors. CVD is an atomistic process, in that the coat grows molecule by molecule. The consequence is that the process is slow and coatings are thin, but the result is a dense high quality deposit with good adhesion to the substrate due to atomic bond formation. Conventionally, the substrate is thermally activated to initiate the CVD reaction, typically above 800 °C. This could also be a serious limitation to some less stable sub-strates. Alternative activation techniques have recently become available which can effectively lower the reaction threshold temperature to $100 °C. These are laser-assisted CVD (LCVD), plasma-activated CVD (PACVD) and electron beam induced CVD (EBCVD). All CVD techniques for producing diamond films require a means of activating gas-phase carbon-containing precursor molecules. This generally involves thermal (e.g. hot filament) or plasma (DC or RF) activation, or use of a combustion flame (oxyacetylene or plasma torches). While each method differs in detail, they all share features in common. A detailed study on CVD diamond process and films is already done by Railkar
et al.