Are Lab-grown Diamonds Real? Some Fact About Lab-grown Diamond

Sushanta Das
5 min readMar 19, 2022

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Diamonds are formed under immense pressure billions and billions of years ago; these gemstones are so precious that they make 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 right. 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 from the naked eye from naturally formed stones.

This article will help you build an overview of the lab-grown diamonds and many of their aspects.

Do you know what lab-grown diamond is?

Jewel Smiths described that lab-grown diamonds are 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 by 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 jewelry.

How are Synthetic or Lab-grown Diamonds Manufactured?

We know that naturally mined diamonds are formed deep inside the Earth’s crust after carbon dioxide is exposed to extreme 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.

To form diamond stones in a lab, the same process is replicated.

Without any technicalities of how a lab-grown diamond is formed, here are some simple explanations.

There are mainly 2 processes that labs use to manufacture diamonds:

1) Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD):

CVD begins with a thin slice of diamond seed, usually formed in the HPHT-produced diamond. The diamond seed slice is placed 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 (HPHT) :

In HPHT, the diamond forming process begins with a small diamond seed placed into carbon.

The root is then exposed to high temperatures of about 1500 degrees Celsius and extreme pressure of almost 1.5 million pounds every square inch. This condition makes the pure carbon melt as a diamond forms around the starter seed. The resultant mass is then cooled to form a pure carbon diamond.

These processes take about 7 to 10 days to form a one-carat diamond in the lab. The same methods require nearly a month to manufacture a three-carat lab-grown diamond.

Which are the most popular Lab-grown Diamonds or Natural Diamonds?

Many jewelry stores in california say that lab-grown diamonds are sustainable, both environmentally and economically. The current generation of people ( called Gen Z) is gradually moving away from the conventional use of natural diamonds toward the stones formed in the laboratories. Many people come to know about the authenticity of lab-grown diamonds and understand that they are different from natural diamonds mined from Earth’s surface; they are moving toward accepting jewelry items of diamonds grown in labs.

The increasing concern around the environment and economy has made people flock toward accepting the lab-grown diamonds much more and earlier than anticipated.

Reasons for Manufacturing Diamonds in a Lab

Do you think that when diamonds belong in nature, then what is the need to grow them in labs?

You know that a natural diamond takes around billions of years to become a stone worthy of jewelry making; sometimes, not even then. Scientists have compressed the time from billions of years to a few weeks or months with technological advancement. Besides this, there are so many benefits and reasons behind growing a diamond in the lab:

  • Mining this stone impacts nearly thousands of acres of land of its biodiversity. So in those areas break biodiversity, but nothing of such sort happens when diamonds are grown in labs.
  • To mining diamonds, so many workers lost their lives under the deep tunnels in the Earth. By creating synthetic diamonds, such incidents can eliminate.
  • Natural diamonds occur in several shades, but lab-grown diamonds can be formed in colors that are not possible naturally. Many stones created in labs are red, yellow, and green.

Lab-grown Versus Natural Diamonds

There is no such difference between a lab-created diamond stone and the mined diamond from the Earth’s surface when comparing the visibly and chemically structure. Both stones are durable and sturdy, and they both have the same characteristics and appear 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 the diamonds is still the primary differentiating factor. While one is formed inside the extreme hot condition of Earth’s crust for billions of years, the other is created 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 distinction is only determined by experts 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 mention the stone’s origin as Lab-Grown or natural in the certificate.

Lab-grown or synthetic diamonds are a modern, cost-effective alternative to a natural diamond. 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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Sushanta Das
Sushanta Das

Written by Sushanta Das

I am a blogger and like to write blogs.

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