Assertion: Mr. Bryant Linares, (President of Apollo Diamond, the company that has invented the technology) stated in his interview that Apollo has patented a process to grow diamonds. The tag line for this new product is the C.V.D. diamond. C.V.D. stands for Chemical Vapor Deposition. The idea, according to Mr. Linares, is “you must first determine the exact combination of temperature, gas composition, and pressure—a ‘sweet spot’—that results in the formation of a single crystal.” Apollo states that they have discovered that “sweet spot.” The Wired magazine article goes on to paint a picture of $5.00 per carat, non-detectable, synthetic diamonds soon to be on the market. The article continues, this could potentially break the iron grip that DeBeers has had on the diamond industry for over a century and awake us from our slumber to affordable diamonds for everyone! Happy ending? End of story? Not quite.
Reality: Not mentioned in the article by Joshua Davis from Wired magazine is that the product they are producing is averaging only 2 millimeters thick! That’s the exact thickness of a nickel—a far cry from the typical size diamond preferred by the diamond-buying public. Unless you’ve got a craving for a 1/20th of a carat engagement ring, there is no Utopia here or expected any time in the near future. Another thing not widely reported is that when they are able to get slightly larger crystals, they tend to be brown. The American buying public is primarily a buyer of whites. Apollo’s solution to the brown color is to anneal (bake) the diamonds after step one and bake the nitrogen and boron right out like a ring around the collar. Apollo also likes taking credit for discovering the “sweet spot,” when in reality chemical vapor deposition of carbon atoms from hydrogen-rich, carbon-containing gas was invented in the 1980’s. The process has been used to deposit thin polycrystalline diamond films on cutting tools. One of the last claims to fame for Apollo’s C.V.D. rocks is the potential that they will be undetectable from the naturals. Not hardly. Natural diamonds occur in nature, forming paired nitrogen atoms. Synthetics have only single nitrogen atoms. Also, all the samples examined so far fluoresce a very weak yellow-orange under long-wave UV (ultra-violet) light; moderate yellow-orange in short wave UV and strong red fluorescence under high energy UV light. It’s true that man (just like in the 50’s) has the capability to grow diamonds, but they are nowhere near the time when they will be able to mount said white diamond into a Tiffany setting and sell it to the public on a widespread commercial level.
If that day ever comes, you’ll be the first to know.
Well you’re partially correct, but you do seem to be a bit behind the times. Colorless CVD Diamonds as large as 1 cm3 have been grown (Bristol Diamond Group), and they only take about 2days to grow with the current microwave technology. However there is still significant upscaling potential. Hot Filament CVD has been previously over looked due to a very slow growth rate, but if this could be over come the method could be used to grow single crystal diamond plates 12″ in diameter and as much as 2cm thick! Admittedly this would take about two months to grow a batch, but over all it could have a higher carat output than current methods. Another nice aspect of the HFCVD method is that it doesn’t have the energy to dissociated Nitrogen gas, so it would not be incorperated into the diamond and thus no N-V centers for flourescence detection. Well these ideas are still alittle way away, and the CVD diamonds would not be sold as natural anyway. Why would they be? There really seems to be no reason to try to imitate the natural stones when you’ve already got something that is less flawed, and more consistent, cuttable, and controllable. I predict that “synthetic” diamonds will eventually bring a premium compared to the natural. (Baring continued misinforamtion muddling public opinon) In fact I will go one step futher and say that not only are “synthetic” diamonds not “fake” or “Identical to Diamonds” THEY ARE DIAMONDS!!!! There is absolutely no difference between a diamond taken out of the ground and one grown in a lab. Diamond is defined as a specific type of chemical bonding arrangement, and it is the same in natural as it is in synthetics. The only differences are in the types of trace impurities they have. Natural diamonds have just as many impurities as (good quality) synthetic diamonds, they are simply a different set of impurities. For example HPHT diamonds tend to be included with metals and nitrogen, MWCVD diamonds tend to have nitrogen and trace amounts of hydrogen and some non-diamond carbon. Naturals have their own set of impurities depending on where they GREW and what minerals surrounded them during their formation. I’m sorry, but I am a scientist (grad student in materials science), and it’s beginning to annoy me how people keep trying to say that synthetics are somehow less than a true diamond. Admittedly though I hope to personally start my own diamond growing company someday, so I might be alittle slanted, but look at the science don’t just listen to the marketing departments.