Because chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is based on diffusion, isotope separation should take place if the process is in the diffusion‐limited range. The enrichment in a horizontal reactor as used for silicon epitaxy is calculated including thermal diffusion effects. It is found that whereas the deposition rate decreases exponentially along the reactor with characteristic length Λ, the isotope enrichment decreases linearly over the length from maximum to zero at
x=normalΛ
. The maximum value depends in a complex way on the masses and concentrations of the gas to be separated and the second gas, present as a reaction component or carrier gas. The requirements for efficient CVD isotope enrichment, which include fast mixing, a high deposition rate, and high enrichment ratio can be satisfied better by a liquid‐source CVD system. An experimental arrangement is described and discussed in terms of heat transfer by film boiling. The absence of an unstable range in the plot of the heat flux against the temperature is ascribed to the effects of the decomposition process which dominates the evaporation. The importance of the increased rate of heat transfer due to the reversible accumulation of energy in chemical reaction products is stressed. The effect of an applied electric field is mentioned. Experiments with carbon deposition from
C12H26
have shown a 12C/13C enrichment ratio up to 0.8%, whereas
normalΔM/2M=0.3%
. This effect is attributable to mass and thermal diffusion, selective evaporation, spray fractionation by drops acting as microultracentrifuges, and geometry effects. The possibility of achieving uranium isotope separation with a CVD process has been considered theoretically. Thermodynamically possible reactions are specified by which liquid
UF6
is transformed into solid
UF3
,
UF4
, and
UF5
. In this way uranium should be transported quickly from one condensed phase to another with an increasing lighter isotope concentration in the deposited reaction product. The reactor products can easily be retransformed into
UF6
so that the enrichment cycle can be repeated until the desired isotope ratio is achieved. In principle CVD can also be used as a collector mechanism with laser‐induced isotope enrichment.