Lab Created Diamonds Come to Market

E writes "Technology is putting some new sparkle in the world of diamonds. Until recently, naturally occurring, mined diamonds were unchallenged in their quality and desirability. But now laboratory-created diamonds, which possess the same properties as naturals, are poised to give them a run for their money. A new company, Adia Diamonds, has quite the variety in their inventory. They have the same chemical and physical properties as a mined diamond and come in white, blue and yellow. Both GIA and EGL grading labs are offering certifications for lab created diamonds. Seems like a good, high-tech alternative to the DeBeers diamond cartel."

anything is a good alternative to DeBeers

[yagu]

Lab manufactured diamonds is an interesting concept, but if DeBeers gets its metaphorical finger in machine, it will ensure these diamonds either never get manufactured, or if they are manufactured never hit the marketplace with the name "diamond". The DeBeers monopoly is too dear and too powerful for disruption like this.

You can argue the "blood diamond" political aspects of the diamond mining industry, but even tossing that aside DeBeers' behavior and domination and control of the diamond industry transcends any other monopoly. There's a reason DeBeers isn't a U.S. company (among many others...), DeBeers' monopolistic practices and domination and heavy handed control of the diamond market would not likely pass legal muster in the U.S.

If you ever get a chance (/. "girlfriend" jokes aside), buy the lab diamonds, or buy your to-be a genuinely rare gem such as a Ruby (diamonds are not rare).

The sooner the myth that is diamonds is de-mythed, the better. Read more about diamond myths here [diamondcuttersintl.com].

A great article on the subject

[g_adams27]

Wired had a great article [wired.com] on the subject of synthetic diamonds a few years ago. An excerpt:

Back at the Diamond High Council, I open the film canister and shake the Apollo stones onto the table. Van Royen tentatively picks one up with a pair of elongated tweezers and takes it to a microscope. "Unbelievable," he says slowly as he peers through the lens. "May I study it?" I agree to let him keep the gems overnight. When we meet the next morning in the lobby of the High Council, Van Royen looks tired. He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. "I think I can identify it," he says hopefully. "It's too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless."

Re:Natural Complexity

[Dun Malg]

There's a reason why imitations (exempli gratia: CGI) lack that je ne sais quoi: we are unable to reproduce the complexity of naturally occuring systems.

There is no difference whatsoever between a mined diamond and a man-made one (other than that the man made ones have fewer flaws). The is no "je ne sais quoi" that distinguishes one from the other. The reason man-made diamonds can't get traction is that the mined diamond suppliers have a very tight grip on the supply channel and synthetic diamonds are not available in large enough quantities for any large gem buyer to risk losing his place as a De Beers sightholder. The threat to the diamond mining industry is very real, though. De Beers is actively promoting the propaganda that man-made diamonds aren't "real"-- despite the fact that they're generally of higher quality in terms of clarity and uniformity.

Much more detailed article

[Gregoyle]

Wired [wired.com] did a much more in depth article on this subject a couple years ago.

One thing to keep in mind is that saying the lab-created diamonds possess the same qualities as natural diamonds is a little misleading. They are certainly diamonds, in that they are the same type of crystal form of carbon, but they *are* distinguishable from natural diamonds.

What I find very interesting is just how expensive and advanced equipment needs to be to tell the difference, and how much Debeers is shelling out to ensure that the biggest diamond testing labs have that equipment. Check out the linked article for more on that.

If you want to do something about challenging the DeBeers cartel and their questionable business practices, check out Canadian Diamonds [canadadiamonds.com], also here [aurias.com] and here [polarbeardiamond.com].

Indistinguishable?

[Nefarious Wheel]

My late father was a jeweler and certified diamond rater (whatever that meant, but he studied hard for it). He said that all natural diamonds and sapphires, no matter how pure they look, have little inclusions and flaws in them. The way to tell them from the synthetic gems was that the synthetic gems were too perfect, and didn't have those microscopic flaws.

He also told me how to tell an artificial pearl from a real one -- the real one, he said, will dissolve in vinegar. Strange sense of humor he had.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[Dun Malg]

Actually, De Beers is terrified. Over the last decade, they have pushed "genuine diamonds". Cool. A good jeweler and a bit testing could determine the difference between natural and artificial.

No, there is no non-destructive* way to reliably tell man made diamond from mined based on any material characteristics. The only way even a "good jeweler" can tell the difference is by checking for the official De Beers registry number laser etched on one of the facet edges. All part of their "genuine diamond" propaganda campaign. "Fake" diamonds are not registered.

* mass spectrometry might do it by detecting certain trace elements, but in the end all diamonds are nothing more than tetrahedrally bonded carbon.

Re:Indistinguishable?

[Jane Q. Public]

That was not a joke. Back in the day it was a relatively easy and useful way to tell a genuine batch of pearls from fakes. Take random samples and see if they would begin to dissolve.

Of course you would not want to dissolve the whole pearl. That would be silly.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[Jane Q. Public]

That is simply not so: inclusions and crystal imperfections scatter light. They can be found visually (with magnification) and by spectral or refractive examination. Those are material characteristics, or dependent upon material characteristics. As for spectrometry, that is almost completely useless, since natural and man-made diamonds (at least the good ones) are made entirely of the same material. Most of those with a significant amount of impurities can be identified with the naked eye.

Re:Natural Complexity

[porcupine8]

You should really read the Wired article [wired.com] from a couple of years ago, when this was just starting and the lab diamonds weren't on the retail market yet.

They had a Belgian diamond expert examine one of them, and he was fooled. The industry had to create new types of testing just so that experts can pick these out. There's no uncanny valley here. They're real diamonds, just mass-produced.

Re:Much more detailed article

[admactanium]

I saw that and tried to buy one of these 'cultured' diamonds back then. The only man made diamonds you could buy were yellow, pink, etc. Sure, super rare, yada, yada, yada... but many months of looking you could not find the classic clear diamond. If folks are starting to sell the clear diamonds, this is big news.

exactly. i've been doing this research myself as i'm smack-dab in the middle of the process of buying a diamond. the other company i looked into is apollo diamonds [apollodiamond.com]. i wrote them an email asking about their current inventory and they only sell clear diamonds up to half a carat. once these sythetic diamonds reach a point where they can produce >1ct diamonds in white then they'll start selling in droves. personally i'm really looking for a 1.25 carat or greater so these diamonds, which was very nice, are not right for what i'm looking for. i bet within a year or so they'll be there. it'll be interesting to see what the debeer's monopoly will do in reaction to gem quality >1ct white diamonds hitting the market. i bet their ad budget goes through the roof.

These are not cheaper!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at their white diamonds, the only one they list is really not cheaper than the natural diamond. In that case, the only advantage is the social conscious one - which is great if that's important to you.

Caveat - they only had one white diamond. I do not know if their gigantic 3 carat stone would be significantly cheaper than the natural alternative.

http://www.adiadiamonds.com/diamond.php?diamond=AB E138 [adiadiamonds.com]
Price: $1,505 ($2,640 per Carat)
SKU: ABE138
Shape: Round
Weight: 0.57 carat
Color: E
Clarity: SI3

vs Shane Company
0.58 carat E color ,SI2 (meaning less imperfections) for $1,665
    $150 more but better quality and slightly bigger
or
0.59 carat E color, I1 (more imprefections) for $1,280
    More inclusions but lower price... eh

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[ravenshrike]

Ding!. The DeBeers cartel has over a 400 yrs supply of diamond stock. If artificial diamond tech takes off and they can't get a stranglehold, that stock becomes essentially worthless.

Not clear which process makes these.

[Animats]

It's not clear from the Adia diamonds whether these are grown like semiconductor wafers or made in high-pressure presses. Gemesys [gemesis.com] has a Florida plant making gemstones in high-pressure presses. They finally caved in to deBeers and laser-engraves their stones with some ID information. The FTC caved in to the diamond industry and insists they be called "cultured diamonds". They're distinguishable from natural diamonds by their absorbtion spectrum, and deBeers has a tester for this [gemesis.com]

Grown synthetics were still experimental when Wired wrote their article, but that's the more promising process. Those, in theory, can be indistinguishable from natural ones.

The diamond industry had painted itself into a corner with the concept that the most valuable diamonds are "flawless". You do not want to be in that marketing position when going up against the technology that makes semiconductor wafers. Look for PR about how real diamonds have "natural flaws".

Tied to this is the "Kimberly Process" [wikipedia.org], the agreement supposedly intended to restrict the flow of conflict diamonds. This requires source documentation to travel along with diamonds as they pass through the distribution chain. Previously, diamonds were generic; nobody cared where they came from. The Kimberly Process has the effect of making it much harder to insert large quantities of synthetic diamonds into the distribution system.

Incidentally, most industrial diamonds have been synthetic for years. Annual synthetic production is around 600 metric tons, most of it in the form of abrasive grits for cutting wheels and such. When you need to cut a slot in concrete pavement, you use a diamond cutting wheel.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[Hawkxor]

Artificial diamonds now have of these impurities added, just so that they can be indistinguishable (except for some trace elements, as mentioned). There is no jeweler that could tell them apart - and de beers has resorted to putting id tags on their diamonds for this very reason.

Re:Ambiguity

[Hawkxor]

the ultraviolet light distinction is no longer true. then it was the lack of defects and traces of other elements. that also is no longer a difference. it would take a good chemist to tell them apart.

Re:The purpose of the diamond ritual...

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I think it was David Friedman who claimed that the ritual serves an even more specific purpose.

A lifetime ago, the ideal was that a "good" girl would wait until marriage, but in practice many women with normal libidos compromised on waiting until engagement. This led (duh) to guys proposing in order to get laid and then for some reason changing their mind about actually getting married. Laws were actually passed to protect women against having sex with dishonest people.

The ring, then, he argues, was a nonrefundable deposit to provide some evidence that the guy would actually go through with the marriage.

Re:Indistinguishable?

[TubeSteak]

Here's a thread [slashdot.org] (starting with my commentary on why diamonds are cheap for anything besides jewelry) from the "Pharaoh's Gem Brighter Than a Thousand Suns" story a while back.

I had two followup posts.
One of them says where you can buy man-made diamonds (guess you'd want to add http://www.adiadiamonds.com/ [adiadiamonds.com] to the list)

About 6 months ago, I read about a new class of diamonds coming from Russia and Florida (using the russian technology). Apparently the new ones can be designed to have flaws. The article said that DeBeers was trying to figure ways around this, but that they did not have one.

The second followup sums up what I gathered from a PBS link (circa 2000) someone posted.

Essentially, synthetic diamonds are UV reactive because their atomic structure is different from natural diamonds. The PBS documentary link said that this problem with atomic structures would soon be overcome.

So AFAIK, right now, the only ways to tell synthetics from fakes are (A) they are flawless* or (B) they fluoresce.

*A natural diamond is "flawless" if there are no visible flaws under 10x magnification. Synthetics are (I assume) literally flawless under much higher magnifications.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[Ubergrendle]

10 Reasons never to accept a diamond [fguide.org], published in The Economist.

And then of course, the classic Atlantic article [theatlantic.com] about the DeBeers Diamond cartel, and how the manufacture need.

If diamonds are so special, how come they're 20x more common than sapphires but come at such a high premium?

Pearls

[jenara]

You can also tell real pearls from fake ones by rubbing them against your teeth. The real ones feel grainy (like sand) and the fake ones are smooth. I'm a big fan of pearls, and the thought of them dissolving in vinegar makes my skin crawl.

Re:Indistinguishable?

[anagama]

So AFAIK, right now, the only ways to tell synthetics from fakes are (A) they are flawless* or (B) they fluoresce.

Check it out:
http://www.adiadiamonds.com/content/frequently-ask ed-questions/#fluorescence [adiadiamonds.com]

This cannot be

[aepervius]

If the atomic structure was different and there was fluoerescence then this would imply a different structure than tetrahedrical diamond (here and now some double bond for example, or even different type of atoms in the crystaline structure).

The funny things is I did indeed fabricate diamond : I was in a french labor during the early 90's which studied such stuff. They looked more like glass or plastic than diamond :), but then again we made them in form of lens, not in form of jewelry diamond , so there was not "facet" to reflect light and make them atractive. The method used (an inefficient one) was to seed some diamond on a silicon waffer (microdiamond) then put that in a plasma of 95% H2 and 5% CH4 (more or less a big microwave oven of 10K-20K power) for 24 hours. Afterward we had a nice 1-1.5 inch (2.5-3 cm) radius lens with a thickness of 1/8 inch (3 mm). They were far away from "perfect" for jewelry usage, but I put it under 10 years to get them to the point where the only way to distinguish them from natural one would be to MARK the natural one which goes out of the mine. Turn out I was wrong, it took 15 years :).

Ruby ? CHEAP !

[aepervius]

You realize that we can fabricate ruby in BIG quantites since way way back ? If I recall correctly the first laser were done with a long bar of ruby (artificially made) during the 60's. Just put the ruby in a light path and make a population inversion. And houpla ! You get a red laser. Heck, even if my memory fail me and ruby was artificially created later, I recall using some big bar of ruby as practice work to fabricate a laser in my physic 101 university year. So Ruby might be rare, but you can fabricate it cheap ass. EVen cheaper than diamond. If you really want something interresting, then hunt for a precious stone which is not yet fabricated in industrial quantities :).

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[mottie]

the story of the most successful marketing campaign in history

Right you are.. and here's the book to prove it:

The Diamond Invention [edwardjayepstein.com]

Re:Consulted with my wife about this

[shitdrummer]

http://www.gemolite.com.au/ [gemolite.com.au]

I don't know the details of how they're made or any other technical details. All I know is my wife loves her ring and no-one can tell the difference with a naked eye. Even jewlers comment on how lovely it is when she window shops.

Occasionally someone will ask if it's real, to which she responds "of course it's real. It's certainly not imaginary.". People tend not to ask any more questions after that. :)

Shitdrummer.

Re:Consulted with my wife about this

[mrchaotica]

In my search for a man-made diamond, I've become quite adept at seeing through marketing bullshit (if I do say so myself). Keeping that in mind, I carefully looked through Gemolite's website.

I hate to break it to you, but based on the description [gemolite.com.au], Gemolite isn't not diamond at all, synthetic or otherwise. Here are the key quotes:

What is the difference then? Simply this... a diamond, which is the hardest substance in the world, is harder than a Gemolite.

All diamonds are equally hard; therefore, a Gemolite can't be a diamond.

Both stones look alike, both stones have the same basic cubic molecular structure, both stones are cut the same way, both stones are polished the same way, and both are clear white, brilliant and fiery! The differences between them are, for the most part, highly technical in nature that you almost have to be a scientist to understand them.

Lucky for me, I almost am a scientist, so I do understand them. What we've actually got here is a compound with a cubic structure that is not as hard as diamond. Therefore, I'll guess that what Gemolite really is is cubic zirconium [wikipedia.org]. (I would have also guessed that it could be silicon carbide [wikipedia.org], but the variety of that used for gemstones has a hexagonal (rather than cubic) structure.)

Re:Artificial scarcity

[thue]

If you really need to get gemstones to invest in, I would recommend rubies or sapphires

Emm, they can be made synthetically, pretty cheaply I think. I would not pay lots of money for something which has so little claim to being scarce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire [wikipedia.org]

Re:Much more detailed article

[sustik]

See: http://diamondnexuslabs.com/ [diamondnexuslabs.com]

They have been selling clear man made diamonds for a year at least.

"Inwestment" in a diamond? Phffft....

[archeopterix]

All in all, an investment in a diamond mine or even in a diamond ring may be a very bad investment.

"Investment" in a diamond ring has never been any good and hats off to De Beers for convincing the general public otherwise. Here's a link to an article about it:Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? [theatlantic.com]

Re:those don't look like diamonds

[Anonymous Coward]

Diamonds color are graded from D to Z, but only D through J really matters. A-C were excluded because there were no standards early on, so A-C had no particular meaning.

D is colorless, and it is naturally rare. D-F are in the colorless range. H-I have slight color. J's on the edge. If you mount a stone in platinum, color shows up more, so you want a better color grade. If you mount in gold, you have slightly more leeway.

Beyond that point, color is deemed bad. Until you have a LOT of color, which becomes quite rare again. Then you entered the realm of "fancy" (or vivid color) diamonds. The basic scale is:

faint -> very light -> light -> fancy light -> fancy -> intense -> vivid -> dark -> deep

So, the diamond you point to is a vivid yellow fancy diamond. A natural stone of that color costs more than a colorless stone would. It is legitimately more rare. Since this is synthesized cost-effectively, it can be purchased for much less than either a natural colorless or fancy yellow diamond would cost.

As was pointed out, red is the rarest. A natural red diamond costs about a million dollars a carat. A natural blue diamond merely about $200,000 a carat. This company is selling blue diamonds for about $6,000 a carat, which puts them in the realm of comparable quality natural white diamonds. Still not cheap, but within the price range far more people can afford.

Re:this is good on so many levels

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

mmm diamond Heat sinks...
diamond has the best thermal conductivity of any solid [wikipedia.org]
but I wonder how they would form the fins...

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[alienw]

No, this process just checks the refractive index and other simple things. A really good artificial diamond can only be distinguished from a mined one using very large and expensive equipment to check the impurity profile.

This isn't news

[Thaelon]

It's not a good article and it's not something that just happened.

See this [wired.com] for a good article (and it's from 2003).

You can even buy them here [diamondnexuslabs.com] or here [gemex.com], or just read the wired article and check up on the companies mentioned in it.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[dhovis]

Actually that tester tests the thermal conductivity of the stone. Cubic Zirconia is virtually indistinguishable from diamond. A really well trained gemologist can tell the difference some of the time, but not the people who work in jewelry stores.

OTOH, diamond has a very high thermal conductivity and cubic zirconia does not. When CZ first hit the market, jewelers really flipped out, because people could buy diamond rings, replace the diamond with CZ, and then return the ring with the CZ for full price. At first, the only surefire test was to measure the density, but that required removing the stone from the setting, something that takes some time. The company that created CZ then also produced a tester which at its tip had a small heater and a temperature probe a little ways away. If you touch the tip to a diamond, heat will transfer from the heater to the probe, whereas with a CZ, it will not. The company made more money off the patent for the detector than they ever did off CZ.

Of note, a few years back, a new lab-created diamond alternative hit the market: Moissanite. It is a form of silicon carbide, and it actually has a higher index of refraction than diamond (it sparkles more). It also has a high thermal conductivity, so it would fool the old testers. Moissanite is easier to distinguish from diamond under a loupe, however. It is birefringent.

Re:A great article on the subject

[jmichaelg]

I love our government.

Especially when one branch gives deBeers a favorable ruling like the FTC's while anothe branch, Department of Justice, has standing arrest warrents out for deBeers execs. Ever since the 80's, DOJ has been trying to charge deBeers with monopolostic practices but none of the officers will cooperate by setting foot on American soil.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[Mister Transistor]

The device was probably a "GemPrint" machine, a device that makes a laser scatter-graph of the diamond's reflection profile. Each cut makes each diamond provide a unique pattern when you shine a laser into it, and they use these to profile, catalog and serialize the diamond. You can see the scatter-graph of your diamond yourself by shining a laser pointer into the face of the diamond directly while pointing the diamond toward a wall (to avoid blinding yourself). The resulting pattern is very pretty and, of course, unique. One of my old roommates used to work for GemPrint aligning the machines, but that was a while ago - this sounds like a smaller more portable version.

Re:Indistinguishable?

[Ash Vince]

Since I have read this far down and nobody has posted a decent explanation on the difference between a Debeers mined diamond and a made one I thought I would post some five year old info about where they used to be up to. The most advanced people at making artificial diamonds was a lab in Russia.

As far as I can remember the main problem they were encountering was Nitrogen. In a natural diamond which forms over a long period of time the nitrogen atoms would drift together over time and end up clumped together and form a seperate molecule (N4) of pure nitrogen embeded in the carbon lattice. This nitrogen molecule absorbed some light from the carbon but was otherwise undetectable.

In the early attempts at making artificial diamonds they left the nitrogen in but it did not migrate together so ended up actually part of the carbon lattice. This gave the artificial diamonds a slight yellow tint as the nitrogen also emitted light back into the diamond crystal lattice. The Russian solution was to remove all the nitrogen at the start of the process.

This produced perfect, pure carbon diamonds with a perfect crystal lattice. These diamonds however had a the property of trapping light so that when the light falling on them ceased (you switched the light off) they fluoresced, giving off the light they had been trapping with in the crystal lattice due to total internal reflection. Now this may have made them really cool but it did make them different to naturally occuring diamond.

What the Russian team really needed was a way to leave in the Nitrogen impurity but so that it did not ever interupt the carbon crystal lattice.

At this point De Beers was already shitting themselves and started looking at ways of marking there diamonds to prove they were mined diamonds not some knocked up in a lab. They semed to have a number of ideas such as laser etching the DeBeers trademark on each stone and similar but I dont know what the ultimately chose.

If someone has some more info, please post it but don't start it with your dad, grandad, etc used to be jeweler as this just makes it hopelessly outdated. These new lab made diamonds are not like anything De Beers have had to deal with before (Cubic Zirconia, etc) as they are actually made of carbon which is formed into a diamond lattice using super high pressures but in a lab rather than underground.

This information came from some sort of TV documentary I saw a number of years ago.

I did however just throw some stuff at google and this is what came back -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/diamondl abstrans.shtml [bbc.co.uk] - The program I watched on BBC and have summarised (badly) above.

(Please note - my summary is from memory so the info on the above link will be better.)

http://www.russianbrilliants.net/introduction.html [russianbrilliants.net]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/99081 7092046.htm [sciencedaily.com]
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.h tml [wired.com]

talk about a monopoply!

[p51d007]

Everyone bellyaches about Microsoft, the oil companies having a monopoly. Geez! The diamond cartel has had a lock on the diamond market for longer than MS or the oil companies. It's about time someone came up with a good alternative to them. I'm sure if this catches on, Debeers will be dumping diamonds on the market to drop the price to cheaper than what the man made ones cost to produce to run them out of business. It's been known for YEARS that Debeers has been hording diamonds to keep the price up. With a vast stockpile of diamonds, they can afford to dump them on the market to undercut the price of man made diamonds. I'm sure with the advance in technology though, hopefully the man made diamond price will continue to drop, just like electronics. When first released, look what a LCD screen cost. Now look at the price....

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[Elaarni]

But these new diamonds arent CZ, they are chemically identical to diamonds in every way

Diamond Semiconductors

[Zorandler]

I recall reading several articles about how important the creation of these synthetic diamonds are going to be in the future,
not as jewelry but as conductive material for the next round of semiconductors...and therefore powering future generations of high
speed processors and electronics. The properties of diamonds lend themselves better in many respects than silicon in dealing with
high temperatures and harsh environments. Fascinating! Here are a couple links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#App lications [wikipedia.org] and

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Aug/gee20030 827021485.htm [geek.com]

Re:anything is a good alternative to DeBeers

[Mad Dog Manley]

There are two major diamond mines in Canada, and De Beers is already linked (financially) to one of them so far.

Re:Real importance beyond jewelry?

[TheMysteriousFuture]

http://www.cascadiadesignstudio.com/faq-cut-off-ri ng.htm [cascadiadesignstudio.com]

In case of an emergency, such as an injured finger, Emergency Medical Technicians, Fire Departments, and Hospital Emergency Rooms can quickly remove titanium rings.

We hear false claims from jewelry stores that titanium can't be cut. Many jewelers spread this rumor when titanium started to weaken their sales of more expensive bands. If titanium could not be cut and drilled, we wouldn't be able to make our rings using standard high-speed steel tools!