January 2020 - Lab Grown Magazine

January 2020 | LG | The Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 28 How Are Lab-Created Diamonds Grown? While it is unlikely your customers will want or need an in-depth science lesson on how a diamond is grown, it is important to have enough understanding to help them feel comfort- able with lab created diamonds. Use this article and other resources to come up with a brief explanation for your customers. CVD vs HPHT To create these diamonds, it is no simple task and requires exceptionally precise procedures and very costly scientific equipment. It is not like throwing some carbon into a microwave and coming back a few weeks later to pick up your sparkly diamonds. There are two main ways that these diamonds are created in a lab.The first is chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and the second is high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT). Below is an explanation of each process and how it works. Understanding this will be foundational to your ability to properly educate your customers regarding lab created diamonds. Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) CVD is similar to 3D printing a diamond. 1. Pure carbon-rich gasses (often methane) are put into a controlled chamber with 15-30 diamond seeds.The diamond seeds are small wafer-thin slices of diamond. 2. The chamber is then heated to about 900-1200 degrees Celsius. 3. This causes the carbon-based gasses to break apart, allowing the carbon atoms to separate and fall onto the diamond seed crystals. 4. Layer by layer, the diamond grows into a rough diamond crystal. This process takes roughly four to eight weeks and yields gem-grade Type IIa diamonds. High-Pressure High-Temperature (HPHT) High-pressure high-temperature, or HPHT, recreates the natural growth environment found deep within the Earth. 1. Diamond seeds are placed in a HPHT growth chamber with a catalyst mixture. 2. The HPHT chamber reaches temperatures over 1,300 degrees Celsius and 1.5 million pounds per square inch of pressure (PSI). 3. The catalysts react to the added heat and pressure and transform into a molten form causing the graphite within the cell to dissolve. 4. As the molten form cools, the carbon builds on the seed and the diamond grows.The newly formed diamond rough is removed from the HPHT machine once the growth cycle is complete. WhichMethod Is Better? While there is much debate about which method is better, there isn’t a scientific consensus regarding which is better. Except for some obscure structural differences that can only be measured with expensive and rare equipment, the end product is the same. Both CVD and HPHT produce lab-grown diamonds with the same optical, chemical, and physical proper- ties as a mined diamond. By Jerry Taylor, CEO of Lab Grown Source Many customers still don’t understand the true nature of lab-created diamonds. Some think they are cubic zirconium and others assume they are Moissanite. So it is very important to be able to educate your customers. You need to be the expert in order to help your customer understand that lab-grown diamonds are physically, optically, and chemically the same as those diamonds found in the earth.