In September of 2003, around the timeframe of the ratification of the Kimberly Process by the United Nations, Wired Magazine (article is found here) decided to properly cover a blossoming area of the gemological field: lab created diamonds. They are not similar to diamonds… they are diamonds, both chemically and physically. Historically, Russian scientists have had the technology to produce gem quality diamonds, but never reliably or on any sort of a large scale operation. In fact General Electric produced diamonds decades ago for industrial purposes mostly, but the stones were always small (around 1/2 – 1 carat). That has now changed. Today everyone is getting in on the action – from the United States Navy Research Lab, to start up companies Gemesis and Apollo Diamonds, and they are producing large diamonds predictably and efficiently. The biggest use for lab created diamonds at this juncture in time seems to be not in the gem realm, but rather in the semiconductor world.
It is interesting to note how the leaders of both companies received personal messages people assuredly sent by DeBeers, stating that progressing with lab diamond technology is a perfect way to get a bullet in the head. At this time the ink on the Kimberly Process ratification was barely dry, DeBeers had already been publicly shamed – yet they were continuing with their typical show of force in a war that they know they are losing ground.
A little over 3 years after this story, it appears that the demand for lab created diamonds in the jewelry realm is very minimal. I regard this as a good thing, as it is easy to reproduce many gems that occur in nature and that are valuable, with great ease and relatively low cost. To the credit of many of these lab created gems, they are beautiful – even capturing inclusions and imperfections that would occur in nature, in the lab stone; but nothing compares to the beauty of something that took millions and millions of years to form, instead of something that took 3 days to whip up in a clean room.
Faceted lab created yellow diamonds from Gemesis — Identical chemically and physically to stones of natural origin.
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