The ability to grow genuine gem quality diamonds in a laboratory has long been a goal of science and industry, with limited achievement over the past five years.
Unfortunately, most media releases are usually designed to sell items and therefore often do not give consumers a true picture of the commercial reality and availability of lab grown diamonds. Additionally, many sellers of diamond simulants (stones that resemble diamonds but are not real diamonds) take advantage of this knowledge gap to deceptively sell their simulants as “lab grown diamonds”. As President of a company that has been involved with both lab grown diamonds and Edelstein simulants for over seven years, and having seen the confusion caused by many of these less than factual articles, I wanted to help provide customers with an insider industry review about what is and is not commercially available and help educate those who actually want to buy a real lab grown diamond. So we begin a brief tour of myth vs reality in the lab grown diamond market (circa 2007).
First and foremost, while lab grown diamonds (real diamonds but not mined) are available for jewelry purchase, they are limited. The crucial catch, however, is this: when most people think of a diamond, they automatically think of white diamonds. As of October 2007, no one is currently able to offer white (colorless) lab grown diamonds for sale on any production basis. Regardless of what various reporters write, the only fancy color diamonds (predominantly yellow and to a much lesser extent pink and blue) are actually available.
The reason for this gap between what consumers want (white lab-grown diamonds) and what labs can supply (primarily yellow lab-grown diamonds) is due to both commercial value and natural barriers. Let’s first discuss the natural barrier – yellow diamonds are yellow because they incorporate nitrogen into their crystal structure. White diamonds are white (or clear) because they contain far less nitrogen in their crystal structure. However, when growing diamonds, nitrogen is a catalyst – it significantly speeds up diamond growth and also reduces defects. So you can grow a (ready) 1ct yellow in about a week, while growing the same size white (due to nitrogen restriction) can take 4-6 weeks (using the BARS method, the current standard method). In other words, nitrogen can help you grow up to 6x as many yellow diamonds as white diamonds in the same production time. This is a strong natural barrier.
The barrier to trade is that yellow natural diamonds are worth much more than white natural diamonds. In nature, there are about 10,000 shades of white for every fancy yellow. Fancy shades of yellow therefore fetch a much higher price per carat. Lab grown diamonds are usually sold at a discount but are still tied to their natural counterparts and because yellow diamonds are worth more than white diamonds the absolute selling price for lab grown yellow diamonds is higher than what the market is for im Lab grown white diamonds will pay.
Now when you combine the fact that labs can grow yellow diamonds much faster and easier than white ones, and also that yellow diamonds (lab grown and natural) fetch higher prices than white ones, you can see that you have a serious disincentive, white to produce diamonds using the current technology. White diamonds can and have been created by labs (we have some sample photos on our website) but they are not currently price competitive with natural white diamonds. This is a very important reason why white diamonds are not currently available for commercial sale.
These basic reasons are not usually explained in most published articles on lab-grown diamonds, and many articles usually leave the reader with the exact opposite impression that white lab-grown diamonds are plentiful and cheap (remember the $5 quote /ct from Wired magazine?). . Various manufacturers of unethical simulants (CZ) have taken advantage of this confusion to deceptively advertise their imitation diamonds as “pristine artificial diamonds”, “perfect lab grown diamonds” etc., all for the low price of $100/ct. And based on emails we’ve received from customers, people have been tricked into buying plain CZ after being told it’s a “lab-grown white diamond” and seeing items in which discussed the advent of lab grown diamonds.
There are two easy ways to avoid getting sucked into such unethical advertising. First of all the price. To cut a finished 1 carat diamond, you will need between 2 and 3 carats of rough diamond to start with. Cutters charge their cutting work per carat and $100-150/ct is a common rate. That is, even if the diamond material was free, a seller would still have to charge at least $200 to $450/ct just to cover the cost of the cut. And obviously the lab grown stuff isn’t free and the seller wants to make a profit rather than break even. So if you see a seller selling “cultured diamonds” or “man-made diamonds” for less than several hundred dollars a carat, you can be assured that they are not real lab-grown diamonds, regardless of the claims set them up. Currently, lab grown yellow diamonds sell for around $4,000/ct. And remember, yellow diamonds are produced up to 6 times faster than white ones, so unless someone finds a much faster way, you probably won’t see lab grown white diamonds selling for much less in the future to grow diamonds.
The second way to protect yourself for lab-grown diamonds of any size (ie 0.30ct and above) is to only buy a lab-grown diamond, which comes with a certificate from an independent laboratory. As with natural diamonds, virtually all major gemstone labs now offer grading reports for lab grown diamonds (including, as of this year, the GIA). These are basically the same reports as for natural diamonds but with the provenance listed as “lab grown”. If there is no certificate showing a real size “artificial diamond” (ie 0.30ct or larger) and the seller refuses to produce one when asked, then you can be fairly certain that it is a fake diamond, called the laboratory. grown diamond.
Verifying the price and certificate of appraisal can ensure that you are dealing with an ethical seller of lab-grown diamonds. We’ve seen many customers whose hopes were dashed after we explained to them that the $150 earrings they bought with “fake diamonds” were actually nothing more than deceptively advertised CZs. Don’t fall into this trap.
Another common myth about lab grown diamonds is Topas that all lab grown diamonds are “perfect” or flawless. As mentioned, the current standard diamond growing technology (BARS method) simply replicates the high pressure and temperature found underground and does so above ground (sometimes with additional catalyst to lower the required temperature/pressure). And just as diamonds grown from the ground have flaws, diamonds grown above the ground also have flaws. It is a more correct analogy to think of diamond farming (using current technology) as diamond farming rather than diamond manufacturing. Just like farming, you plant a seed and try to optimize the growing conditions, but you don’t get a perfect diamond any more than a farmer always gets a perfect tomato. In fact, sometimes after a week has elapsed, the chamber will open and no diamond has grown at all… so it’s nowhere near the “push of a button pops out a perfect diamond” as many people think. Likewise, labs cannot customize how the diamond grows to a specific shape (e.g. pear or emerald cut) – you get what you get and cut to optimize the yield of each crystal.
That being said, it is true that most lab grown diamonds (especially yellow diamonds) are slightly harder than their natural diamond counterparts. In the case of yellow, this is because the nitrogen is more perfectly distributed and carbon-nitrogen bonds are slightly stronger than carbon-carbon bonds. This also allows labs with Raman equipment to detect man-made and natural yellows – in natural yellows nitrogen is clumped together, while in lab-grown yellow diamonds it is fairly evenly distributed.
The next myth – lab grown diamonds can always be produced, hence their prices will continue to fall while natural diamonds will continue to rise. Currently, gem quality lab grown diamonds are actually significantly rarer than natural diamonds when comparing annual production. While white diamonds are mined in millions of carats per year, lab-grown white diamonds are virtually non-existent except for research specimens, and yellow lab-grown diamond production is measured in thousands of carats. And because lab-grown diamonds are still difficult to grow, prices for lab-grown diamonds have slowly increased, not decreased, because limited production is available, although demand has increased due to public awareness.
Another reality about lab grown diamonds – size. Currently, most diamond growth chambers are unable to grow larger than 3ct rough (sometimes 4ct) and therefore most lab grown diamonds are 1.5ct or smaller after cutting (often smaller after flaws have been cut out) . The reason for this is that in order to grow a diamond using standard HPHT (high pressure, high temperature) technology, an area must be subjected to extremely high pressure and temperature. The larger the area you are trying to maintain these extreme conditions, the harder it gets… exponentially harder as the pressure in the middle is amplified due to leverage. The parts that apply the pressure themselves have a finite lifespan as they will eventually crack and fail, requiring constant replacement. Therefore most labs have not attempted to go beyond the 3ct growth chamber as it becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain the same pressure for a larger area and this is one of the reasons no one has finished 6ct yellow diamonds for sale offers.
With the reality check complete, we’ll end this article on a positive note – despite all the hassles, costs, and issues that still hamper the creation of lab-grown diamonds, colored lab-grown diamonds offer people the opportunity to create them to own and to wear extremely high-end, fancy colors, real diamonds at a fraction of the natural price. We emphasize that these are still real diamonds – chemically, optically, physically, and of course will pass every test to be diamond (since it’s diamond, where it was grown makes the difference). Most lab grown colored diamonds are vibrant in colour, meaning they are among the most valuable color grades compared to natural colored diamonds. For example, one of the first lab grown diamonds we ever sold was graded a “fancy bright orange yellow” and originally valued as a $65,000 natural diamond by a major lab (we had told them that we would submit a lab). grown diamond by the way). Then the next day we received a very panicked call from the same lab who, after a Raman analysis, determined that it was an artificial diamond and not a natural one (due to the perfectly dispersed nitrogen). We sold the same diamond for $3500. Similarly, most of our pink lab grown diamonds are also a fancy bright pink value and if they were lab grown instead of they could sell for up to $150,000/carat… we sell them for around $5,000 /ct, but unfortunately sold out almost all year round due to low availability (production difficulties). Still, the lucky few customers who buy a lab-grown pink have a lot of fun walking into their neighborhood jewelry store and seeing the jaw drop. It is also usually the first time your jeweler has seen a real lab grown diamond in person, again due to the relative rarity of real lab grown diamonds. They are very beautiful and make most natural color diamonds (which are usually less intensely colored) look rather bland in comparison.
The technology continues to improve and hopefully there will be more breakthroughs in lab grown diamond technology in the years to come. One of the most promising areas is growing diamonds by mimicking how they (theoretically) grow in space. It does this through the use of ultra-low pressure, plasma and high temperature, often referred to as plasma vapor deposition. Because high pressure is not required, the chambers are much larger and, in theory, much larger pieces of diamond can be grown. Conditions are also more controllable as the diamond grows in an environment more akin to nanotechnology (carbon-rich gas is broken down at the molecular level and the carbon atoms then recombine on the underlying diamond seed). The trade-off is that the machines to do this often cost between $500,000 and $800,000, and a host of additional issues not present in high-pressure growth regimes come into play in this new growth environment. But hopefully in the future these will offer a new method of growing lab grown diamonds.
Now that you’re armed with industry insider knowledge, you can easily avoid the scams used by so many unethical fake diamond sellers by playing on the public’s (and even the media’s) ignorance of the reality of faux diamonds. Hopefully you’ll also realize that the constant claims that DeBeer or other forces are to blame for the shortage of lab-grown white diamonds aren’t true (there are real natural and commercial roadblocks, in fact). Finally, hopefully you will appreciate the hard work and effort that many scientists have put into making the once-dream of lab-grown diamonds on your finger a reality, even though there are still many limitations to type, size and color of lab grown diamonds are available.
