About Laboratory Grown Diamonds

The forces that have created diamonds in nature millions of years ago, and, possibly even now, have been studied, understood, and, finally, put to work under controlled conditions in a laboratory setting to create the very same crystal in such a setting, namely, high temperature and high pressure.

And "high", the like of height of pressure and temperature generated in volcanic eruptions and by large meteorite impacts on earth it must be. In a word, the upwards of 1400 and up to 1600 degrees centigrade (over 2550 and up to some 3000 degrees Celsius) and over 50,000 and up to 60,000 atmospheres (50-60 kbar) in pressure!

The raw material is pure Carbon atoms procured and used in Carbon's other known lattice structure: Graphite. Suspended in a molten agent medium and introduced to actual diamond seedlings, the Carbon Graphite lattice around the diamond seedling converts gradually, under the applied high temperature and pressure, using mighty cylinders and special heating techniques into an increasingly larger diamond congregating around the seedling core and growing away from it.

The process was successfully implemented first in 1955 by Mr. Tracy Hall, a scientist in General Electrics laboratories, who succeeded in replicating such conditions in a controlled manner and create tiny diamonds.

Slowly the technique has evolved, improved and rendered profitable in generating industrial grade diamonds. Manmade diamonds are today the primary source for industrial diamonds used in grinding and buffing hard materials (including diamonds!).

In the past 15 years or so, the technique and several variants of it have been perfected so as to create stunning gem-quality diamonds in attractive sizes, exceeding, once cut and polished, the one carat mark.

As diamonds, they are graded by most leading North American laboratories today (the GIA, IGI and EGL) according to the same standards and along the same parameter lines: Carat Weight, Shape, Proportions, Cut, Color, Clarity etc. with the important addition of marking them as "laboratory grown" on their girdle and mentioning the same in the issued grading report.

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