Abstract
Diamond has so many exceptional characteristics (high thermal conductivity, chemical inertness, high hardness, excellent insulation, lowest compressibility of any known material, semiconducting properties when doped) that industrial applications would be numerous if natural diamond was not such a high value commodity. If synthetic diamond (rather than diamondlike carbon) could be readily produced it would therefore have an enormous potential worldwide market. Variants on the chemical vapour deposition process are some of the most promising techniques for synthesising diamond, although they suffer from a number of key drawbacks. A more recent development is a novel multiplexed laser deposition system which may offer solutions to many of these problems; work is currently under way to gain a better understanding of this new technique.
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