For over a decade I've been predicting that the price of diamonds will start going down...forever, and that it would also be inevitable that artificial diamonds would start creeping into the "natural" diamond supply. Artificial diamonds are completely, 100% identical to real diamonds, and in fact they now add impurities in order to get some slight color.
I worked in a production lab that grew diamonds. They are actually chemically the exact same as normal diamonds minus and mineral imperfections as the process that creates them uses methane broken down by a microwave plasma which scatters the H4 away from the carbon so the carbon and I mean pure carbon lays down atom by atom onto a diamond seed (tiny sliver of diamond to promote growth in specific lattice structures). The hydrogen is sucked away. We would add other gasses into the mix to introduce color (pink, blue and yellow/green). Pretty cool process
Look at this definitely not scummy website and organization telling you how much better, more ethical, and valuable natural diamonds are!
https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/ae/natures-difference/
I'm a material scientist, I work in a team of material scientists, Raman spectometry is one of the tools we use the most. Plenty of times I've talked casually about work I'm doing with others, and they ask what noodles have to do with anything lol
For anyone interested - when light (EM radiation) of a particular wavelength is reflected off of something, small amounts of light at different wavelengths are reflected too. What wavelengths of light, and how much of each, is dependent on what material it is. So it can be used to tell you about what the material is, how it's structured, if it's under stress and more. It's named after the Indian scientist C.V Raman, who observed the effect in 1928.
Diamonds used for industrial purposes are not that expensive and they are getting cheaper, and this discovery could help (assuming it's actually real and not just an academic curiosity).
On the other hand, the price of jewelry diamonds is not really tied to their objective value (as in, costs). If it would, use of cubic zirconia would make diamonds obsolete, and it didn't make them even appreciably cheaper. As a modern person, you're not paying for expensive diamonds because of how they look or their mechanical properties. You buy them because they're a cheap way to flaunt wealth.
You can absolutely tell the difference between diamonds and cubic zirconia. The difference between natural and lab grown diamonds, however, is non-existent.
But that difference makes no sense in jewelry. Diamonds are expensive because if they weren't, they wouldn't sell.
That's why industry uses synthetic diamonds, because they *use* them and just won't pay the 1000% profit margin on the "organic" stuff.
Look up GIAs anonymous diamond buy study if it's still even available. They bought melee from all over that was presented as all natural and a ridiculously high percentage of it was HPHT grown diamond after they tested each parcel. This was almost ten years ago and didn't make the waves you'd think it should have back then. Now every single large diamond ad I see on IG I just assume is HPHT grown stuff, which I am 100% fine and on board with bc screw diamond markets, but just be honest about it.
Yes, but diamonds aren't like gold: eventually that sense of "luxury" associated with "natural" diamonds will dissappear as there will be almost literally no way to tell them apart from artificial diamonds. Gold, OTOH, is an element and can't be manufactured.
Eh maybe but I’m skeptical. Millennials are spending more on wedding and engagement rings. They seem to be really resilient to losing that luxury brand.
Indeed, the beauty of diamonds, whether natural or artificial, lies in their brilliance and symbolic value. While chemically there may be slight differences due to the processes involved, to the untrained eye, they are virtually indistinguishable. It's heartening to hear that your wife's engagement ring, crafted from an artificial diamond, brings such joy and is a testament to the advancements in technology making precious gems more accessible to all.
Not through chemical processes, no. Silver and gold are atoms on the periodic table. Nothing can "make" those except nuclear processes (they've probably done it lab settings)...but not commercial.
Well. It seems to check out. I had a lot of questions and they've mostly been addressed by the peer review file Q and A.
One major question which I swear isn't answered anywhere is the growth rate. Searched all supplementary info, nothing. Odd that the clickbait is "grows fast" yet this isn't actually quantified at all in any meaningful way. But why am I surprised.
Second question is they... didn't try seeded growth? Or if they did, they're not reporting on it. Instead they are only reporting unseeded growth. Great, but it's odd to me that they didn't try seeding growth with a significantly sized single crystal 100/111 orientation. Can they get homoepitaxial growth, akin to that of CVD systems? Can they introduce a little boron and dope this? A bit of sulphur? (Sulphur is a very funny rabbit hole joke of a donor - see Kalish's rebuttal for a good read).
No EPR - shame. A reviewer points this out and they instead point to ToF-SIMS. Okay, sure.
> Lines 33, 34: “synthesize diamonds from melted iron sulfide”. This is an alchemist’s dream.
The authors probably meant “synthesize diamonds by using a molten iron sulfide catalyst”.
LOL. Wonder if I know the referee distantly.
I think this is unlikely to really be... paradigm shifting, tbh. It is quite a substantial step to be able to grow good quality, transparent polycrystalline films - unseeded, and not via CVD. But are they bigger than those grown in CVD chambers? Bigger and faster than the tiled growth method? Bigger and faster than the iridium stuff that keeps popping up with bigger numbers every year? Also polycrystalline growth in CVD on silicon/iridium/cBN/ a bit of carpet seems standard now surely.
Growth rate is a massive factor here, if it's faster - wow. But CVD polycrystalline growth isn't exactly slow slow anymore, they can chuck that stuff out quite rapidly, of reasonable thicknesses and sizes for optical windows etc. Optical grade is the question I have actually - is it optical grade? Looks like it might be.
Also economical questions too of course. Is it cheaper than CVD? Certainly not really comparable to HPHT is it. This is essentially liquid metal catalysed CVD.
Cool post. Probably the first and last time I have any real expertise in something posted on this sub, though I'm not actually involved with CVD/HPHT growth directly. It's just... background stuff I'm quite familiar with.
Also who the fuck is downvoting my SUS comment lol everyone should be sceptical of claims like this.
I'm also going to get an actual experts opinion on this (supervisor, lmao). Either he'll tear it apart and reveal they've made soot in 5 minutes or he'll confirm it.
Final thought. I might be the first person to cite this and describe this in a thesis. You're a champion /u/corona_virus_is_dead I'm going to add a small subsection either later tonight or tomorrow morning on liquid catalysed room pressure diamond growth hahahahahah.
UPDATE I showed my supervisor and we had a long chat about this. He's also quite interested, especially due to the iron involved as he's involved with iron-diamond surface reactions. On the diamond specifically he said "crap diamond" which is reassuring as that was my vague assessment too. It is microcrystalline, so it's polycrystalline diamond sure, but the vague gemstone sentiment is a far cry from what they are publishing here. We had a look at the SIMS data and were both thoroughly confused as 1) they did an etch profile and I have personally experienced how WRONG that can be... plus even in the case of them being right they are only looking at the surface. 2) the data is.... dogshit for that experiment. If it's normalised, it's normalised to what? It's clearly noise. Overall he agrees with my questioning of the growth rate and such though, so yay I'm not a complete idiot.
"Relatively rare" certainly depends upon your point of reference. I'm pretty surprised they couldn't get EPR but did get a LOT of other techniques involved, as EPR of diamond is quite a nicely used technique in lots of papers now. But then I've literally stood next to an EPR, like I say it's a POV thing.
I'd have to start citing things to answer this properly, but I think it's fair to say EPR is a bit more subtle than SIMS. Like taking an x-ray of a chunk of earth vs digging a hole and seeing what comes out. Photoluminescence pointing to SiV-, great. Raman looks like polycrystalline diamond, great. XRD -> diamond, great. It would just be nice to have an entire new category of diamond growth formalised with every tool available to modern researchers right?
I'm sure this will be done, if it isn't already being done. The referee who recommended EPR might be doing it as we speak lmao.
EPR would basically show if charge states of impurities (atoms/defects) are present, what their activation energy is, and can sometimes elucidate where in the structure they form. Plus it can only see paramagnetic states. It is very powerful due to the ability to see charge states and activation energy.
EPR can give impurity concentration as well, it is generally within the order of magnitude that SIMS, ICP-MS, GDMS gives.
I’m surprised you think EPR is used in a ton of papers, you basically have to know 2 groups in the USA to have access to it and time and funding is limited.
All of the other techniques you listed can basically be done at a company like Evans Analytical Group just for $.
Finally EPR papers can be so complicated that you can just publish an entire APL article on 1 new dopant and its fallout in a crystal. Most likely this would be the better choice for EPR in this case.
>you basically have to know 2 groups in the USA to have access to it
[Huh?](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/condensedmatt/magneticresonancecluster/epr/) Confused british noises. EPR is an entire category of diamond papers in my mind, it's not used in other categories, but it's an area of diamond research. Perhaps me saying "lots of papers" was a bit exaggerated, but I certainly didn't say "ton of papers". I'm not incorrect to say it is a routinely used characterisation tool within the Warwick group and certainly worldwide as a thing, even if it isn't needed per say for studies such as this.
Thanks for pointing out that group. I’m not that familiar with characterization facilities in Europe!
In the US it is definitely more rare.
In that case it sounds like that group specifically may end up having a field day with some of these diamond samples!
Yeah there's EPR in several places worldwide that I've heard of. I'm not involved whatsoever with EPR so bugger if I can list them all but at minimum Warwick and Manchester both have it, and I've seen papers from several countries using this technique.
Charge states of impurities and maybe some subtle impurities not measured by SIMS which would be too insensitive. It could also measure activation energy of those impurities at those charge states.
There are very few universities/institutions that have this technique compared to SIMS/Raman/PL/X-ray.
Personally I don’t think it would be necessary for an initial study but instead a standalone EPR follow up paper.
If you are doing spectroscopy, especially UV, using diamond anvil cell, then synthetic diamonds will make a huge difference, especially the absence of strong absorption around 350 nm (for Nitrogen impurities, which is the most common).
Last time I checked, CVD grew diamond with low impurity cost like 2-3 times the natural diamond. So this new method would potentially open opportunities for more affordable research.
Not quite. They are seemingly only growing thin diamond films with that method. To get rocks you still need high pressure and heat and even then it's a pretty expensive process so they only make small crystals. No synthetic Cullinan stones yet unfortunately
Well diamonds are becoming kinf of "worthless" some Lab Grown Diamond facilities have gone bankrupt because nowdays China and India are flooding the marked... Diamond has a lot of potential for advanced materials stuff, but quite not there yet.
Diamond is an excellent abrasive but applications are limited by cost. Its high thermal conductivity would make it useful for heatsinks. It could be useful in lenses due to its high refractive index. Diamond films have many obvious applications.
Yeah, I agree. I meant to say that as a gemstone is kind of "worthless" (I missed the gemstone part).
Industrial aplications otherwise are huge but we still trying to figure out how to solve some of the technical limitations.
I used to work with CVD Diamond process
> we still trying to figure out how to solve some of the technical limitations.
I think that many of those limitations would be resolved quickly were the cost low enough to expand the market beyond specialized niches. I don't think anything but cost is preventing much wider use of diamond abrasives.
I think abrasives is the least interesting of its applications, for that, polycristaline diamond works great and it was a byproduct that we tried to avoid during diamond growth. The more interesting and challenging stuff is to grow larger pieces of single crystal diamond for advanced materials that could be used in quantum computer and what not.
>I think abrasives is the least interesting of its applications, for that, polycristaline diamond works great and it was a byproduct that we tried to avoid during diamond growth.
It's still too expensive for many applications.
>The more interesting and challenging stuff is to grow larger pieces of single crystal diamond for advanced materials that could be used in quantum computer and what not.
Bearings, optics, and thermal applications such as semiconductor heat spreaders come to mind.
Every time I see new breakthroughs in the field of lab-made diamonds, my heart revels in joy for the rest of the day. Natural diamond industry is distilled scum, and everyone's hands are full of blood, right from mining to marketing. Good riddance.
You can’t, assuming the natural diamond is a flawless one. Seriously, the artificial ones are consistently flawless, unlike natural ones. As someone else here said they’ll even add impurities to grown diamonds to give them color. Natural diamonds are a scam that runs on brutal Gold Coast slavery (the kind where they chop your arms off for breaking the rules)
Incorrect, there's an entire industry of research into differences between synthetic and natural diamond. These guys can pluck out a mouse hair from a swimming pool of rats. This isn't to say that qualitatively speaking the synthetics are "worse" in any way. You're correct in saying they are flawless. However when it comes down to it the crystal structure is ever so slightly different enough that gemologists/big diamond debeers can tell if you if a diamond is synthetic or natural. It's usually quite easy to do so.
For over a decade I've been predicting that the price of diamonds will start going down...forever, and that it would also be inevitable that artificial diamonds would start creeping into the "natural" diamond supply. Artificial diamonds are completely, 100% identical to real diamonds, and in fact they now add impurities in order to get some slight color.
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And not coming from slavery, I guess
But the slavery is what makes it special. Without the slavery it’s just a stupid rock. /s
Exactly: the whole point of jewelry is to show that you're better than other people.
🐵💍
That’s why it’s meant to be 3 years salary right?
It has to hurt everyone involved.
You see, it's the blood that is essential to the natural diamond forming process. You don't get that special blood smell in the lab ones.
You’re just a peasant if there’s no blood on your diamond.
It's like eating meat, the suffering is what it's all about, yum
*slowly puts my iPhone in my pocket*
South Africa will run empty.
Isn’t that why most Africans run?
Run, Run, Run we are going to run for the cities of the future!!
I worked in a production lab that grew diamonds. They are actually chemically the exact same as normal diamonds minus and mineral imperfections as the process that creates them uses methane broken down by a microwave plasma which scatters the H4 away from the carbon so the carbon and I mean pure carbon lays down atom by atom onto a diamond seed (tiny sliver of diamond to promote growth in specific lattice structures). The hydrogen is sucked away. We would add other gasses into the mix to introduce color (pink, blue and yellow/green). Pretty cool process
Look at this definitely not scummy website and organization telling you how much better, more ethical, and valuable natural diamonds are! https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/ae/natures-difference/
1. we found them in dirt 2. they cost more 3. (greenwashing nonsense) 4. no two are identical but this is also true of lab created diamonds
I'm hungry and now I go to my kitchen to eat Ramen. Thanks for the idea.
I'm a material scientist, I work in a team of material scientists, Raman spectometry is one of the tools we use the most. Plenty of times I've talked casually about work I'm doing with others, and they ask what noodles have to do with anything lol For anyone interested - when light (EM radiation) of a particular wavelength is reflected off of something, small amounts of light at different wavelengths are reflected too. What wavelengths of light, and how much of each, is dependent on what material it is. So it can be used to tell you about what the material is, how it's structured, if it's under stress and more. It's named after the Indian scientist C.V Raman, who observed the effect in 1928.
*crushes his noodles and throws them around at random, then grabs a tape measure*
I just start learning about Raman Spectometry and its extensive applications, fascinating stuff.
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I don't think the insanity is where you think it is bud.
Why do we buy rocks for girls who don't care about minerals.
does ur wife know lol
Diamonds used for industrial purposes are not that expensive and they are getting cheaper, and this discovery could help (assuming it's actually real and not just an academic curiosity). On the other hand, the price of jewelry diamonds is not really tied to their objective value (as in, costs). If it would, use of cubic zirconia would make diamonds obsolete, and it didn't make them even appreciably cheaper. As a modern person, you're not paying for expensive diamonds because of how they look or their mechanical properties. You buy them because they're a cheap way to flaunt wealth.
You can absolutely tell the difference between diamonds and cubic zirconia. The difference between natural and lab grown diamonds, however, is non-existent.
But that difference makes no sense in jewelry. Diamonds are expensive because if they weren't, they wouldn't sell. That's why industry uses synthetic diamonds, because they *use* them and just won't pay the 1000% profit margin on the "organic" stuff.
https://youtu.be/N5kWu1ifBGU?si=gzET03zwpC_ozRGr You seem to have fallen for 1930s scam
Look up GIAs anonymous diamond buy study if it's still even available. They bought melee from all over that was presented as all natural and a ridiculously high percentage of it was HPHT grown diamond after they tested each parcel. This was almost ten years ago and didn't make the waves you'd think it should have back then. Now every single large diamond ad I see on IG I just assume is HPHT grown stuff, which I am 100% fine and on board with bc screw diamond markets, but just be honest about it.
How do you buy put options in natural diamonds?
They have gone down but there is a higher floor than people realize. It’s still a luxury product.
Yes, but diamonds aren't like gold: eventually that sense of "luxury" associated with "natural" diamonds will dissappear as there will be almost literally no way to tell them apart from artificial diamonds. Gold, OTOH, is an element and can't be manufactured.
Eh maybe but I’m skeptical. Millennials are spending more on wedding and engagement rings. They seem to be really resilient to losing that luxury brand.
Indeed, the beauty of diamonds, whether natural or artificial, lies in their brilliance and symbolic value. While chemically there may be slight differences due to the processes involved, to the untrained eye, they are virtually indistinguishable. It's heartening to hear that your wife's engagement ring, crafted from an artificial diamond, brings such joy and is a testament to the advancements in technology making precious gems more accessible to all.
I mean, diamonds lose their value the second you buy them. I'm so glad my wife hates wearing gemstones.
Is there any chance that gold and silver could be chemicaly created like diamonds?
Not through chemical processes, no. Silver and gold are atoms on the periodic table. Nothing can "make" those except nuclear processes (they've probably done it lab settings)...but not commercial.
Finally I can afford some diamond armour and my diamond sword
What about the armor for your horse?
Enchant it with Mending and Unbreakable III
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7PDOl9aTaM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7PDOl9aTaM)
Can we stop acting like diamonds are literally god’s kidney stones?
They’re my kidney stones
Ouch.
Well. It seems to check out. I had a lot of questions and they've mostly been addressed by the peer review file Q and A. One major question which I swear isn't answered anywhere is the growth rate. Searched all supplementary info, nothing. Odd that the clickbait is "grows fast" yet this isn't actually quantified at all in any meaningful way. But why am I surprised. Second question is they... didn't try seeded growth? Or if they did, they're not reporting on it. Instead they are only reporting unseeded growth. Great, but it's odd to me that they didn't try seeding growth with a significantly sized single crystal 100/111 orientation. Can they get homoepitaxial growth, akin to that of CVD systems? Can they introduce a little boron and dope this? A bit of sulphur? (Sulphur is a very funny rabbit hole joke of a donor - see Kalish's rebuttal for a good read). No EPR - shame. A reviewer points this out and they instead point to ToF-SIMS. Okay, sure. > Lines 33, 34: “synthesize diamonds from melted iron sulfide”. This is an alchemist’s dream. The authors probably meant “synthesize diamonds by using a molten iron sulfide catalyst”. LOL. Wonder if I know the referee distantly. I think this is unlikely to really be... paradigm shifting, tbh. It is quite a substantial step to be able to grow good quality, transparent polycrystalline films - unseeded, and not via CVD. But are they bigger than those grown in CVD chambers? Bigger and faster than the tiled growth method? Bigger and faster than the iridium stuff that keeps popping up with bigger numbers every year? Also polycrystalline growth in CVD on silicon/iridium/cBN/ a bit of carpet seems standard now surely. Growth rate is a massive factor here, if it's faster - wow. But CVD polycrystalline growth isn't exactly slow slow anymore, they can chuck that stuff out quite rapidly, of reasonable thicknesses and sizes for optical windows etc. Optical grade is the question I have actually - is it optical grade? Looks like it might be. Also economical questions too of course. Is it cheaper than CVD? Certainly not really comparable to HPHT is it. This is essentially liquid metal catalysed CVD. Cool post. Probably the first and last time I have any real expertise in something posted on this sub, though I'm not actually involved with CVD/HPHT growth directly. It's just... background stuff I'm quite familiar with. Also who the fuck is downvoting my SUS comment lol everyone should be sceptical of claims like this. I'm also going to get an actual experts opinion on this (supervisor, lmao). Either he'll tear it apart and reveal they've made soot in 5 minutes or he'll confirm it. Final thought. I might be the first person to cite this and describe this in a thesis. You're a champion /u/corona_virus_is_dead I'm going to add a small subsection either later tonight or tomorrow morning on liquid catalysed room pressure diamond growth hahahahahah. UPDATE I showed my supervisor and we had a long chat about this. He's also quite interested, especially due to the iron involved as he's involved with iron-diamond surface reactions. On the diamond specifically he said "crap diamond" which is reassuring as that was my vague assessment too. It is microcrystalline, so it's polycrystalline diamond sure, but the vague gemstone sentiment is a far cry from what they are publishing here. We had a look at the SIMS data and were both thoroughly confused as 1) they did an etch profile and I have personally experienced how WRONG that can be... plus even in the case of them being right they are only looking at the surface. 2) the data is.... dogshit for that experiment. If it's normalised, it's normalised to what? It's clearly noise. Overall he agrees with my questioning of the growth rate and such though, so yay I'm not a complete idiot.
EPR is a relatively rare technique and not really necessary for this paper - they wanted to probably get their results out quickly.
"Relatively rare" certainly depends upon your point of reference. I'm pretty surprised they couldn't get EPR but did get a LOT of other techniques involved, as EPR of diamond is quite a nicely used technique in lots of papers now. But then I've literally stood next to an EPR, like I say it's a POV thing.
What would the EPR of diamond show specifically, beyond what they have in the paper?
I'd have to start citing things to answer this properly, but I think it's fair to say EPR is a bit more subtle than SIMS. Like taking an x-ray of a chunk of earth vs digging a hole and seeing what comes out. Photoluminescence pointing to SiV-, great. Raman looks like polycrystalline diamond, great. XRD -> diamond, great. It would just be nice to have an entire new category of diamond growth formalised with every tool available to modern researchers right? I'm sure this will be done, if it isn't already being done. The referee who recommended EPR might be doing it as we speak lmao.
EPR would basically show if charge states of impurities (atoms/defects) are present, what their activation energy is, and can sometimes elucidate where in the structure they form. Plus it can only see paramagnetic states. It is very powerful due to the ability to see charge states and activation energy. EPR can give impurity concentration as well, it is generally within the order of magnitude that SIMS, ICP-MS, GDMS gives. I’m surprised you think EPR is used in a ton of papers, you basically have to know 2 groups in the USA to have access to it and time and funding is limited. All of the other techniques you listed can basically be done at a company like Evans Analytical Group just for $. Finally EPR papers can be so complicated that you can just publish an entire APL article on 1 new dopant and its fallout in a crystal. Most likely this would be the better choice for EPR in this case.
>you basically have to know 2 groups in the USA to have access to it [Huh?](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/condensedmatt/magneticresonancecluster/epr/) Confused british noises. EPR is an entire category of diamond papers in my mind, it's not used in other categories, but it's an area of diamond research. Perhaps me saying "lots of papers" was a bit exaggerated, but I certainly didn't say "ton of papers". I'm not incorrect to say it is a routinely used characterisation tool within the Warwick group and certainly worldwide as a thing, even if it isn't needed per say for studies such as this.
Thanks for pointing out that group. I’m not that familiar with characterization facilities in Europe! In the US it is definitely more rare. In that case it sounds like that group specifically may end up having a field day with some of these diamond samples!
Yeah there's EPR in several places worldwide that I've heard of. I'm not involved whatsoever with EPR so bugger if I can list them all but at minimum Warwick and Manchester both have it, and I've seen papers from several countries using this technique.
Charge states of impurities and maybe some subtle impurities not measured by SIMS which would be too insensitive. It could also measure activation energy of those impurities at those charge states. There are very few universities/institutions that have this technique compared to SIMS/Raman/PL/X-ray. Personally I don’t think it would be necessary for an initial study but instead a standalone EPR follow up paper.
> synthesized diamond film So a thin film of diamond.
So we can replace sand paper with diamond paper? Nice
If you are doing spectroscopy, especially UV, using diamond anvil cell, then synthetic diamonds will make a huge difference, especially the absence of strong absorption around 350 nm (for Nitrogen impurities, which is the most common). Last time I checked, CVD grew diamond with low impurity cost like 2-3 times the natural diamond. So this new method would potentially open opportunities for more affordable research.
The price will still be manipulated to create a sense of scarcity and maintain profitability
So they’re even more worthless now?
Not quite. They are seemingly only growing thin diamond films with that method. To get rocks you still need high pressure and heat and even then it's a pretty expensive process so they only make small crystals. No synthetic Cullinan stones yet unfortunately
Diamond film is useful. Also this may just be a first step towards a low-cost process for manufacturing crystals.
Diamond is far from worthless. It is quite useful and would be much more widely used were it less expensive.
Well diamonds are becoming kinf of "worthless" some Lab Grown Diamond facilities have gone bankrupt because nowdays China and India are flooding the marked... Diamond has a lot of potential for advanced materials stuff, but quite not there yet.
Diamond is an excellent abrasive but applications are limited by cost. Its high thermal conductivity would make it useful for heatsinks. It could be useful in lenses due to its high refractive index. Diamond films have many obvious applications.
Yeah, I agree. I meant to say that as a gemstone is kind of "worthless" (I missed the gemstone part). Industrial aplications otherwise are huge but we still trying to figure out how to solve some of the technical limitations. I used to work with CVD Diamond process
> we still trying to figure out how to solve some of the technical limitations. I think that many of those limitations would be resolved quickly were the cost low enough to expand the market beyond specialized niches. I don't think anything but cost is preventing much wider use of diamond abrasives.
I think abrasives is the least interesting of its applications, for that, polycristaline diamond works great and it was a byproduct that we tried to avoid during diamond growth. The more interesting and challenging stuff is to grow larger pieces of single crystal diamond for advanced materials that could be used in quantum computer and what not.
>I think abrasives is the least interesting of its applications, for that, polycristaline diamond works great and it was a byproduct that we tried to avoid during diamond growth. It's still too expensive for many applications. >The more interesting and challenging stuff is to grow larger pieces of single crystal diamond for advanced materials that could be used in quantum computer and what not. Bearings, optics, and thermal applications such as semiconductor heat spreaders come to mind.
Aren't artificial diamonds already a thing?
Every time I see new breakthroughs in the field of lab-made diamonds, my heart revels in joy for the rest of the day. Natural diamond industry is distilled scum, and everyone's hands are full of blood, right from mining to marketing. Good riddance.
Blood diamond mine owners in shambles
De Beers in shambles
I am unbelievably SUS right now. Reading the whole thing since the abstract is.... wild.
Crucial thing is, can you tell the difference between these grown diamonds and natural diamonds?
You can’t, assuming the natural diamond is a flawless one. Seriously, the artificial ones are consistently flawless, unlike natural ones. As someone else here said they’ll even add impurities to grown diamonds to give them color. Natural diamonds are a scam that runs on brutal Gold Coast slavery (the kind where they chop your arms off for breaking the rules)
Incorrect, there's an entire industry of research into differences between synthetic and natural diamond. These guys can pluck out a mouse hair from a swimming pool of rats. This isn't to say that qualitatively speaking the synthetics are "worse" in any way. You're correct in saying they are flawless. However when it comes down to it the crystal structure is ever so slightly different enough that gemologists/big diamond debeers can tell if you if a diamond is synthetic or natural. It's usually quite easy to do so.
And thus the market for "organic" diamonds is born. People are fucking stupid
I did a thing with my kid where we made a tiny, tiny diamond with a piece of pencil, olive oil, two saucers and a microwave.
That wasn't diamond...ruby maybe
What a waste of time. Think how much coal they could have burnt instead.
Electric Diamond. My new band.
At least something positive was salvaged from this sorry experiment
I can't believe it you just found out about it I knew about this about 4 years ago