The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is a third-generation synchrotron facility that generates powerful x-ray beams on its undulator beamlines for a variety of scientific and industrial user research programs. It is very important to know the position and the angle of the x-ray beam during experiments. Due to very high heat flux levels, several patented x-ray beam position monitors (XBPMs) exploiting beneficial characteristics of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond have been developed. These XBPMs have a thin layer of low-atomic-mass metallic coating so that photoemission from the x rays generates a minute but measurable current for position determination. Another concept has been the graphitization of the CVD diamond surface to create a very thin, intrinsic conducting layer that can stand much higher temperatures and have minimal x-ray transmission losses compared to coated metallic layers. In the present study, a laboratory sputter ion source was used to transform selected surfa...