Attainable sustainable diamonds

New diamond creation technology makes owning a diamond more accessible, and more ethical!

Man made diamonds make the future sparkle even brighter

During the first and into the second decade of the 21st century Silicon Valley had high hopes of becoming a vibrant manufacturing center for the construction of solar panels. As it turned out the dream never materialized. China was making solar panels so cheap that there was no way to compete in the USA.

This is the backdrop to the founders of Nanosolar beginning to explore ways to build that would apply their expertise to new technologies. Nanosolar, if you haven't heard about them yet, is a large start-up that raised about half a billion dollars in its first six years,

The founder was a man named R. Martin Roscheisen, who along with a team of engineers and scientists announced that they had developed an advanced approach to making diamonds. They would be using technology derived in part from the technology used in the making of silicon chips and solar cells. Lab made diamonds started being successfully developed in laboratories in the early 1950s. The technology has continued to improve, and today there are no less than ten laboratories that can grow diamonds.

One company though ( see where to buy laboratory made diamonds ) claims to have made proprietary breakthroughs that will make it possible to manufacture high-quality diamonds cost-effectively and faster than ever before.

The new approach being used means that it is possible for them to “culture” diamonds in a most cost effective manner. Let's just say that it will be at a cost that is on par with the best naturally occurring gems. The company has launched a distribution website to compete with existing jewelry stores. It's still early days but the plan is that this will reduce markups and therefore be appealing both to jewelry designers and the general public.

According to Mr. Roscheisen, the new process makes it possible to manufacture large quantities of Type IIa diamond. this type of diamond is a pure white material. It represents 1 to 2 percent of all natural diamonds. Other manufacturers also make IIa-quality gems, but the team says it has developed a process that will be more effective at “growing” diamond material, layer by atomic layer. The key difference is that this method is able to produce diamonds at a higher speed than any other technology to date.

Diamonds made of pure carbon. Carbon comes in many forms, but when aligned in a perfect matrix light passes through the material easily and this is what we know as a diamond. The company's researchers have spent years developing this new manufacturing technique. It is based on using a plasma source with a new “shape” that is 10 times as powerful as what has previously been used by manufacturers of lab grown diamonds.

What they've done is modifying the shape of the plasma field. The group was consequently able to make the reaction that forms the diamond structure more efficient. This was the key to creating the diamond material so fast. Even doubling the speed of production would be amazing but this process speeds up the process by no less than one hundred and fifty times the speed of other technologies.

Mr. Roscheisen was quoted by the New York Times as saying that, “This means we can grow 100 percent pure diamond of white color” at a rate that compares to the speed at which it is mined.

The diamond creation starts out with a very thin slice diamond as a substrate. The size of the original diamond is increased when material is added in layers of carbon atoms. Mr. Roscheisen said experts in scientific laboratories would be able to determine that the diamond was synthetic because it would resemble a kind of diamond that does not appear frequently in nature.

“Experts in jewelry stores and gemologists cannot tell,” he said. “There’s nothing they can see.”

Two ways that are currently used to successfully manufacture diamonds include HPHT method which involves the application of high pressures and high temperatures and the detonation of explosives that create diamond nanocrystals and using ultrasound to create micron-size diamond crystals, in addition to the vapor-deposition approach used widely in manufacturing semiconductors and solar cells.

Wuyi Wang, lead research scientist for the GIA (Gemological Institute of America), a nonprofit group that grades diamonds and precious gems, said that the market for lab grown diamonds was extremely competitive. In an interview with the New York Times he added that many companies were trying to improve techniques to produce the stones.

Dr. Wang said he had not examined samples using the new technique, but he said that it was possible for GIA to distinguish between natural and manufactured Type IIa diamonds.

But discerning between natural diamonds and lab grown diamonds does require specialized equipment. It also requires a great deal of expertise. Distinguishing between the two would not be possible without this expertise.

In an effort to break the control that the traditional diamond industry has over the diamond market, the company (listed at where to buy lab grown diamonds) has created an online web store where it will offer diamond jewelry by well-known jewelry designers. Most of the jewelers that are collaborating are associated with Ethical Metalsmiths, an organization that encourages ethical and environmentally sound practices among jewelry makers.