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What are lab grown diamonds?
Diamonds are formed under immense pressure billions and billions of years ago; these gemstones are so precious that they put a smile on every girl’s face with love.
It is congruously said that ‘diamonds are forever,’ but did you know that not all diamonds are obtained from Earth’s crust? Yes, that is good.
A diamond ring company said that scientists have begun to grow diamonds in the labs as technology and humans advanced with time. These diamonds are lab-grown and do not differ to the bare eye from naturally formed stones.
What are lab grown diamonds?
Jewel Smiths described lab-grown diamonds as being manufactured by scientists in a laboratory rather than found on Earth. These stones have the same chemical formula and makeup as natural diamonds and are optically identical.
It is easy to say that a lab-created diamond is “grown” by scientists inside a lab using the cutting-edge, latest technology that replicates the natural diamond growing process. Such a technique results in a human-made diamond identical to the natural diamond chemically, physically, and optically.
Often lab-grown diamonds are also termed synthetic diamonds, but do not let that name fool you to understand that they’re ‘fake.’ A lab-grown diamond is as real as a diamond stone mined from the Earth’s surface and made into jewellery.
How are lab grown diamonds made?
We know that naturally mined diamonds are formed deep inside the Earth’s crust after carbon dioxide is exposed to excessive heat (around 2,200 degrees F) and put under intense pressure (near about 727,000 pounds/square inch). These gemstones are then carried to the Earth’s surface by volcanic eruptions.
The same method is repeated to form diamond stones in a lab.
Without any technicalities of how a lab-grown diamond is formed, here are some simple explanations. There are primarily 2 methods that labs use to simulate diamonds:
1. Chemical Vapor Deposition
CVD begins with a thin slice of diamond seed, usually formed in the HPHT-produced diamond.
The diamond seed slice is positioned in a sealed chamber, heated to 800 degrees Celsius, and filled with carbon-rich-gas, such as Methane and many more.
These gases are ionized to break the molecular bonds in the gases, resulting in the pure carbon forming into the diamond seed and crystallizing.
2. High Pressure-High Temperature
In HPHT, the diamond-forming method begins with a small diamond seed placed into carbon.
The root is then revealed to high temperatures of about 1500 degrees Celsius and extreme pressure of almost 1.5 million pounds every square inch. This situation makes the pure carbon melt as a diamond forms around the starter seed. The resultant mass is then cooled to create a pure carbon diamond.
These processes take approximately 7 to 10 days to form a 1-carat diamond in the lab. The same methods require nearly a month to manufacture a 3-carat lab-grown diamond.
What are the most popular options: lab-grown diamonds or natural diamonds?
Many jewellery stores in California say that lab-grown diamonds are sustainable, both environmentally and economically. The current era of people (Gen Z) is gradually moving away from the traditional use of natural diamonds toward the stones formed in laboratories.
Many people come to know about the realism of lab-grown diamonds and understand that they are different from natural diamonds mined from Earth’s surface; they are moving toward accepting jewellery items of diamonds grown in labs.
The increasing problems around the environment and economy have made people flock toward accepting lab-grown diamonds considerably more and earlier than expected.
Reasons for Manufacturing Diamonds in a Lab
Do you believe that when diamonds belong in nature, then what is the need to develop them in labs?
You know that a natural diamond takes billions of years to become a stone worthy of jewellery making; sometimes, not even then. Scientists have compressed the time from billions of years to a few weeks or months with technological progress. Besides this, there are so many advantages and reasons behind developing a diamond in the lab:
- Mining this stone affects nearly thousands of acres of land of its biodiversity. So those sites break biodiversity, but nothing of such sort happens when diamonds are grown in labs.
- In mining diamonds, so many workers lost their lives under the deep tunnels in the Earth. By making synthetic diamonds, such happenings can be eliminated.
- Natural diamonds occur in several shades, but lab-grown diamonds can be formed in colours that are not possible naturally. Many stones created in labs are red, yellow, and green.
Lab grown VS Natural Diamonds
When comparing the visible and chemical structure, there is no such difference between a lab-created diamond and a mined diamond from the Earth’s surface.
Both stones are stable and sturdy, and they both have the same characteristics and seem similar to a gemologist. But if you want to know how you can differentiate between a lab-grown diamond and a natural diamond, then there are some factors to look at:
- The origin of both diamonds is still the primary differentiating factor. While one is formed inside the extremely hot condition of Earth’s crust for billions of years, the other is produced in a simulated environment in a few weeks or months.
- There are clear differences between a lab-grown diamond and a natural diamond. Diamond stones formed in the lab have different growth morphology and how the various conditions impacted the shape of the diamond crystal. But such a difference is only confined by specialists working in the field of gems.
- Lastly, as a buyer, the only way you can find a difference between these two diamonds is to look at their certificates. The agencies grading the diamonds would cite the stone’s origin as Lab-Grown or natural in the certificate.
Lab-grown or synthetic diamonds are a modern, cost-effective choice of natural diamonds. If you are interested in buying a lab-grown diamond, you can go with a shop that personalized diamond rings such as Jewel Smiths.
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