Abstract
Diamond was uniformly nucleated on large area Si(001) substrate (3cm$\times$4cm) using the low pressure magnetoactive microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition. $CH_4/He$ gas mixture was used as source gas in order to obtain high radical density in the nucleation enhancement step. $CH_3$radical density was measured by means of infrared laser absorption spectroscopy. The effect of substrate bias voltage on diamond nucleation was examined. The results showed that a suitable positive bias voltage appled to the substrate with respect to the chamber could enhance diamond nucleation while a negative bias voltages leaded to deposition of only non-diamond phase carbon.