Abstract: Nonhydrogenated amorphous carbon films have been prepared by a new plasma technique, filtered arc deposition （FAD）. It was found that the carbon were highly sp³ bonded so that the films were referred to as amorphous diamond （a-D）. UV, IR and elliposometry spectra were applied to investigate the optical properties of the formed films. The mechanical properties and structure characteristics of FAD a-D films were studied in detail. In addition, the field emission behavior of the films were also investigated in this work.