> Hi,
> Can anyone give me some information about the feasibility of
> diamond as a bearing material, particularly the cost of
> fabrication etc. Any good links would be helpful. Thank you

This paper covers tribology of several thin films, including diamondlike
carbon (DLC):

Beerschwinger et al, 1994, "A study of wear on MEMS contact
morphologies," J. Micromech. Microeng. 4, pp 95-105.

The DLC was a 0.7um layer deposited by LPCVD at 150-200C.  They don't
mention the precursor gas, but methane is commonly used.  The DLC layer
exhibited less wear than single crystal silicon, polySi, thermal oxide,
or PECVD nitride.  More significantly, the rate of wear decreased during
testing, suggesting than after initial surface smoothing the wear rate
was extremely low.

John Maloney
Senior MEMS Engineer
MicroCHIPS, Inc.
www.mchips.com