Synthetic Diamonds
Since 1953, it has been possible to take graphite, smush it really hard at really high temperatures, and come out with some sort of synthetic diamond, that looks and behaves much like a real diamond. There are generally two ways to do this. One is High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) synthesis of synthetic diamond, and the other is Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). The former results generally in bigger synthetic diamonds, but the latter is a much simpler and cheaper design. If we are to analogize, I’d say that the former synthetic diamond production method is an application of brute force. Enclose the carbon in on all sides, squeeze it mercilessly and heat it up way beyond civil temperatures, and force it to bind to itself.
The second method is more of a finesse. You get the carbon excited a bit and introduce some carbon-based gas, usually methane, into a chamber, energize it with some sort of concentrated energy source like an electron beam, and you activate all of the bonds at the same time, while they are all willing to bond to the next atom they see. The goal is carbon, though this is what makes the CVD method less reliable for bigger synthetic diamonds. Any impurity will be immediately bonded to the carbon.
As one may guess, the advent of synthetic diamond had DeBeers freaking out about market prices. But as we all know of mother nature, she never disappoints. Much like bread, when made without artificially freeze-dried yeast and allowed to ferment and rise on its own over a period of weeks tastes much better, so too with natural diamonds over synthetic diamonds. A stone lying in the earth’s mantle for billions of years allowed to naturally grow will generally have a lot less impurities than one produced over a matter of hours or days.
As a matter of fact, they even have a word for sythetic diamond that is of such low quality as can be seen by the naked eye. They call it bort. Synthetic diamond bort is used mostly as an abrasive tool in cutting machines. So is most of synthetic diamond. Just because it don’t look as pretty don’t mean it’s not the hardest substance on the planet anymore. It still is, making the industrial applications of synthetic diamond very diverse and necessary. I bet when a construction company CEO is going home after a long day of scratching out the foundations for a new city with synthetic diamond, he feels he has accomplished much more than the Jeweler who sold a six figure stone to a rich guy getting married.
