This excellent, in-depth review of diamond films and coatings covers their properties, growth, deposition, characterization, and applications. The eight chapters are written by experts in their field. Early studies on synthetic diamonds were done in the 1950s and 1960s, however, their use and importance were not recognized until the late 1970s and early 1980s. These coatings are now being used in high temperature and tribological applications, optics and electro-optics applications, and certainly biological applications.

This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the November 8-10, 1982 Conference on EMERGENT PROCESS METHODS FOR HIGH TECHNOLOGY CERAMICS, held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. It was the nineteenth in a series of "University Conferences on Ceramic Sci ence" initiated in 1964 by four institutions of which North Carolina State University is a charter member, along with the University of California at Berkeley, Notre Dame University, and the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. More recently, ceramic oriented faculty in departments at the Pennsylvania State University and Case-Western Reserve University have joined the four initial institutions as permanent members of the consortium. These research oriented conferences, each uniquely concerned with a timely ceramic theme, have been well attended by audiences which typically were both international and interdisciplinary in character; their published Proceedings have been well received and are frequently cited. This three day conference addressed the fundamental scientific background as well as the technological state-of-the-art of several novel methods which are beginning to influence present and future directions for non-traditional ceramic processing, thus affecting many of the advanced ceramic materials needed for a wide variety of research and industrial applications. The number, the importance and the application of new ceramic processing techniques have expanded considerably during the last ten years."