As a "non-contact" process, the effect differs from traditional electrochemical processes where carrier flow through the surface is achieved by connection to a current source with highly conductive materials such as copper wire. It is well known that materials contacted to an anode can be modified in a variety of ways including anodizing and electropolishing. Electrochemistry was quickly recognized as an important related field in the popular press once the first synthetic diamonds were made. However, the use of an induced field created by remote electrodes allows discontinuous areas on an insulating substrate to be cleaned, modified, or etched (similar to electroetching), greatly expanding the role of electrochemical methods.
The mechanism is presumed to be due to the induced field but little in the way of exhaustive analysis has been done, as the actual processes do not appear to differ from traditional approaches. For example, "identified as the ‘Marchywka Effect’ in the literature. The etching may be due to the galvanic coupling of diamond and non-diamond carbon". The applied field apparently creates directed surface modifications on polished diamond surfaces with little or no actual removal of material. This may be desirable for making various devices, or simply studying the properties of the diamond surface. The induced field deposits or replaces a single layer of some molecule and this could be thought of as a monolayer electroplating method. It has been elucidated in more fully in many works.