Lab Created Diamonds: Junk or Valuable?
Diamonds may be a girl’s best-friend but can the average person tell the different between real diamonds and lab-created diamonds?
Lab-created diamonds are created through a technologically-inspired process, while natural diamonds are created by natural occurring geological processes. The lab created diamonds are known as HPHT diamonds or CVD diamonds, and they are called this, because of the way they are created.
HPHT diamonds are created by using a high pressure and high temperature synthesis. In this method, there are three main press designs that supply the needed pressure and temperature that produce and form these types of diamonds. The three design presses are the belt press, the split-sphere (BARS) press, and the cubic press. To make the process simple – these three presses tighten around a coal-like substance and after a time will produce a synthetic diamond. The CVD diamond method is a process where a diamond is created from a hydrocarbon gas mixture. These methods of creating diamonds have been in use since the 1980s.
Now, some people believe that these diamonds are inferior to that of naturally created diamonds, but this is not the case. The inherited properties of a synthetic diamond all demands upon the manufacturing details. This means it can be inferior or superior depending on it. In many cases, the hardness, electron mobility, and thermal conductivity are actually superior in some synthetic diamonds than natural diamonds. Nonetheless, these diamonds are not used for jewelry. They are used for more menial purposes like abrasives and in cutting and polishes tools.
Currently, some electronic applications are trying to use synthetic diamonds as high-powered switches at power stations, light-emitting diodes, and high-frequency field-effect transistors. Synthetic diamonds are becoming a popular material for optical windows in gyrations and CO2 lasers because of its unique combination of thermal and chemical stability.
Both HPHT and CVD diamonds can be cut into gems and be a wide variety of colors. A lab-diamond can be orange, blue, green, brown, and yellow! However, there are ways to find and spot a synthetic diamond. Ever since these diamonds have appeared, the diamond trading business has been very wary about it. Therefore, the natural diamond trading companies created special spectroscopic devices, techniques, and methods in order to spot and find lab-diamonds and distinguish them from natural ones. This process is done long before any jewelry is made – so any person who owns jewelry can rest assured that the diamonds they have are the real article.
The properties of these diamonds are generally like that of the properties of natural diamonds. However, the hardness of lab diamonds is the hardest materials known to today and its ability to have thermal conductivity is unmatched.
Lab created diamonds are everywhere and they serve valuable uses for modern society. Because lab diamonds are the hardness substances known, they are the ideal material for machine tools and cutting tools. They can cut away at anything –even naturally occurring diamonds. Therefore, while not a high-classed item, lab diamonds serve society in numerous other valuable ways.