Abstract: | Non-equilibrium growth of synthetic diamond layers by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) techniques on heterosubstrates has largely been improved over the past decade. On silicon substrates highly textured and oriented diamond films can be grown with optical transparencies and thermal conductivities suitable for broad-band optical windows and heat spreaders. Boron pulse-doping of homoepitaxial diamond layers leads to high p-conductivity at room temperature allowing the fabrication of Schottky diodes and field effect transistors operating at temperatures up to 1000 K. Other devices such as sensors and detectors are being successfully fabricated. At the same time many basic questions remain to be solved including efficient n-type doping. |