Hot-filament chemical vapor deposition(HFCVD)i s a promising method for commercial production of diamond films.Filament performance in heat transfer and hydrogen decomposition in reactive environment was investigated.Power consumptionby thefilament in vacuum,helium and 2% CH4/H2 was experimentally determined in temperature range 1300℃ —2200℃.Filamentheat transfer mechanism in C-H reactive environment was calculated and analyzed.The result shows that due to surface carburizationand slight carbon deposition,radiation in stead of hydrogen dissociation,becomes the largest contributor to power consumption.Filament-surface dissociation of H2 was observed at temperatures below 1873K,demonstrating the feasibility of diamondgrowth at low filament temperatures.The effective activation energies of hydrogen dissociation on several clean refractory filamentswere derived from power consumption data in literatures.They are all lower than that of thermal dissociation of hydrogen revealingthe nature of catalytic dissociation of hydrogen on filament surface. Obsservation of substrate temperature suggested a weakerrole of atomic hydrogen recombination in heating substrates in C-H environment than in pure hydrogen.