Say what you want about diamonds but there's one thing about diamonds that is undeniable: Diamonds express elegance like nothing else. Period.
Making an Ethical Choice
Today we don't need to anyone to dig up a hole the size of many football fields to be able to get our hands beautiful diamonds to wear. We can instead have someone create them in a lab. Lab created diamonds, might also be called engineered or cultured diamonds. These are grown, maybe not quite in the way a tree grows, but they are nonetheless grown. The way it's done is an amazing feat of scientific endeavor. The environment they are grown in has to be in a highly controlled laboratory environment. You've probably guessed that it can only be done using advanced technological processes and you aren't wrong. The lab essentially has to duplicate the conditions under which diamonds naturally developed when they formed in the mantle, beneath the Earth’s crust. These lab created diamonds consist of carbon atoms. You might have trouble keeping the shirts in the dresser in line. Scientists working on these diamonds have to make sure the carbon atoms have to be arranged in the characteristic diamond crystal structure. Not nearly as hard as keeping shirts and skirts in place. Kidding! It's crazy hard! But managing that is the holy grail of diamond synthesis. Something that has been sought for years. And yes now they have managed to do it by keeping the environment under super super super high pressure. And then some more. Since they are made of the same material as natural diamonds, the final product exhibits the same optical and chemical properties as do mined diamonds.
A Fascinating Development
Some lab diamonds are grown from a tiny carbon seed taken of a small piece of diamond. The advanced technology I mentioned earlier is basically one of the following two: either extreme pressure and heat or a special deposition process. Both ways work to simulate the natural method in which earth diamonds formed. It is even possible to create colored diamonds in a lab. This is done by adding small amounts of the right trace elements during the growth phase of the diamond. Interestingly this process demonstrates that the scientific understanding as to how diamonds under the earth initially formed is correct. Otherwise scientists would not have been able to duplicate the method in the lab. Anyway...In both clear and fancy colored lab diamonds, the exact composition of trace elements may differ from their natural diamond counterparts. You can only tell that lab grown diamonds are grown in a lab rather than being natural diamonds if you examine them using specialized equipment. This special equipment detects the minor differences in trace elements and crystal growth.
Lab grown diamonds are available in a variety of colorless ranges similar to the range found in natural diamonds. As mentioned a little earlier lab grown diamonds are also available in fancy colors that are considered very rare in nature, including popular hues of vivid fancy yellow. Fancy colored lab created diamonds are not nearly as costly as natural colored diamonds.
