Deposition of diamond film on steel can improve its corrosion resistance,bio-compatibility,hardness and wear resistance,prolong its service life.And the product of the steel coated with diamond film has a wide potential application in mechanical and med-ical industry.However,directly depositing diamond film on the steel have problems such as catalytic graphitization by iron(or cobalt,nickel),large stress and easy delamination.The research for the problems has been conducted for more than 30 years and a lot of ex-perience for process and interlayer has been obtaned.The paper reviews research status for direct depositon of diamond film on steel and the interlayer in the deposition of dia-mond film on the steel.In addition,the future research direction was prospected.