Graphene’s remarkable properties make it a potential candidate for a range of electronic applications such as organic solar cells, ultra capacitors, biosensors, nano-electronics and batteries [1]. For many applications the direct growth of graphene on CMOS compatible substrates such as silica is required. Unfortunately, graphene has not been grown directly on silica substrates. An alternative approach is to grow graphene on copper films which have been deposited onto silica [2]. Subsequent etching of the copper film allows for an easy transfer of the graphene onto the silica wafer. However, the reports so far have needed two different deposition techniques in order to deposit the copper and graphene film. We recently reported that it is possible to use physical vapour deposition to grow graphene with up to 10 layers on copper foil at 750 oC using a carbon plasma generated by filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) [3]. Here we now report the use of FCVA to deposit copper films on silica for the synthesis of graphene within the same deposition system. The films deposited in these studies have been characterised using a range of techniques including, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy.