Artificial Diamonds Trigger a Furious Counter-Offensive

Diamonds may be forever, but their prices aren't. Thanks to a breakthrough at the Carnegie Institution the gemstones could soon be less "small super expensive signs of wealth" and more "great construction materials that don't break no matter how often you drop them."

We've been able to make artificial diamonds for a while now with methods like CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition), layering down the carbon crystal bit by bit - you can even make them from tequila this way (which kind of ruins the expensive mystique). Diamond merchants haven't been threatened by these synthetic stones because they pick up a dirty, brownish tint in manufacture. Which supports the salesman's sniffing dismissal that "they aren't as good as the real thing."

It's possible to get rid of this problem by annealing the stones, heating and cooling them to thermally massage out the flaws, but until now this required huge high-pressure equipment. This kept the price too large and the stones themselves too small. Director Hemley's team have developed a way to cook the stones using a microwave-heated hydrogen plasma. This mechanism is much cheaper and, more importantly, has no limits on scale. The team already predict that kilocarat gems will be possible - for comparison, the largest cut diamond in the world is only half a kilocarat and is worth over four hundred million dollars. Or at least, it is so far.

Diamond suppliers DeBeers are already taking steps against this new source of high quality, flawless synthetic diamond. They've set up the "Gem Defensive Programme" which details how to tell natural and synthetic diamonds apart. We haven't got the details of this program yet, but as far as we can tell the primary differences are

1. The new synthetic diamonds are cheaper, of higher quality and have less flaws

2. DeBeers only get money if you buy natural diamonds

By Luke McKinney

Synthetic Diamonds on New Scientist

Comments

[Methusaleh]

Good riddance to DeBeers and their exploitative practices.

[Dave]

There was a time when industries tried to jump on board new innovations that made things cheaper and easier, in order to keep their monopolies. These days they try and stifle them. Much like the record industry. Strange...

[Collin]

Could this be the future of portable device screens? How nice would it be to have a scratchless surface on your iphone/blackberry/camera etc?

[Qev]

It'll be nice to see the diamond cartel wither and die. As a gemstone, diamonds are practically worthless anyway; sure, they look nice and cost a fortune when you initially purchase them from the cartel... but try to re-sell one, and their true worth shows through.

[Lemdog]

The scientific and commercial applications of this technology are immense and will trump DeBeers. Maybe I should wait another decade to get married and buy a ring...

[Kick de Beers]

Ahhhh, the thought of DeBeers passing into the dustbin of history. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of world-class cut-throats. Some years ago, the Smithsonian Institution held an evening program on rare gems. The slide show featured a blue diamond. The commentator mentioned that most of this gorgeous blue diamond had been shattered by the giant wall-grinder which is the standard mining method in the mines. And DeBeers doesn't give a rat's burp in a hurricance, of course: all they want are fragments big enough to make stones for rings. A diamond the size of the Cullinan wouldn't last a second with today's methods; the only reason we have the Cullinan at all is because it was found in 1905, before modern methods - in fact it was picked out of the wall by a manager who spotted it.