Man Made Diamond: How Is A Diamond Made
By
Gordon
Petten ‘Man made diamond’ is also
known as synthetic diamond and this ‘man made diamond’ or the
‘lab created diamond’ undergoes a chemical and physical process
in the diamond mines. The main difference between ‘Man made
diamond’ and the natural diamond is the composition of three
dimensional carbon crystals. The ‘lab created diamond’ or the
‘man made diamond’ are known by various names such as
manufactured diamond, artificial diamond, industrial diamond or
the cultured diamond. ‘Man made diamond’ is manufactured either
from the silicon carbide or the cubic zirconium.
History of the Lab Created Diamond
The first ‘man made diamond’ was manufactured in Sweden in
1953 by Quintus and by an engineer Anders Kampe. This lab
created the diamond manufacturing process, bulky and huge
machines were used which were designed by Baltzar Von Platen.
But this feat was not known to many people. After one year
General Electric took a giant step in manufacturing the ‘man
made diamond’. This step encouraged the many young aspirants and
the ‘man made diamond’ industry came into existence in the
nineteenth century. The main industrialist in lab created
diamond or the ‘man made diamond’ was the GE Super abrasives and
the De Beers Industrial Diamonds.
In and around 1980 some additional ‘man made diamond’
industries were formed in Korea. Later on the Chinese became the
pioneers in the lab created diamond process. GE Super abrasives
later on sold their ‘lab created diamond’ unit to Little John
and this was named the Diamond Innovation Company of 2003.
During this same time De Beers Industry was divided into two
different ‘man made diamond’ industries and the second industry
was known as Element Six.
At present, there are many ‘man made diamond’ industries
available around the globe and some are well known diamond
industries such as Sumitomo Electric Hard Metal, Smith Mega
Diamonds and the United States Synthetic Diamond industry. Today
the ‘lab created diamond’ has a market of one billion dollars
and produces around three billion carats of the Man made
diamonds in a year. Out of these three billion carats only 130
million carats are used in the manufacturing gems.
Manufacturing Process Of Lab created Diamonds
To create a diamond, there are basically two methods that are
used now days. One of the methods is high a pressure, high
temperature method and commonly known as HPHT method in the ‘man
made diamond’ manufacturing arena. As the production cost is
less in this process, making it a more popular method used world
wide. The main accessory used is a heavy press that provides a
pressure of 5 GPA and the temperature that is formed due to this
pressure is around 1500 degree Celsius. The diamond better known
as ‘man made diamond’ is created by all these procedures inside
the earth’s crust. In this process there are two types of
presses used and they are a belt press and a cubic press.
Another method used in ‘Lab created diamond’ is the Chemical
Vapor Deposition which is also called the CVD method. In this
method carbon plasma is formed on the top where the tiny carbon
atoms are made form a ‘Man Made Diamond’. In this CVD various
gases are used to energize the suitable conditions for diamond
growth on the top layer. This method of Chemical Vapor
deposition was introduced in 1980.
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