In contrast to conventional DC bias-enhanced nucleation, a pre-carburization step was not needed in the processing of epitaxial diamond on (1 0 0) silicon using pulsed biasing. Otherwise, the procedure showed little frequency dependence on the epitaxial process in the range of 1 Hz-2 kHz, resulting in a constant percentage of highly oriented diamond of nearly 50%. The only variation with frequency was a linear increase in the bias current and a corresponding decrease in the biasing time required to form a quasi-continuous nucleation layer. In contrast, the variation of a 60-Hz square waveform duty cycle from 3 to 75% showed a decreasing hyperbolic relationship with the percentage of oriented diamond, with a plateau of similar to45% occurring at duty cycles of less than or equal to17%. The bias time to film formation was also determined to be inversely proportional to the duty cycle. The collective data highlights the relevance of the waveform attributes on the epitaxial nucleation of diamond on (1 0 0) silicon. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.