Pastor-Genève Coloured Diamonds Blog

Author: David Cowley

The first wave of gem-quality manufactured diamonds hit the market late in 2003. Man-made diamonds is nothing new and the technology has been available since the mid 19th century. Small diamond crystals were created for industrial purposes such as grinding wheels, drill bits and saw blades. What is new is that a Florida based company can now produce rough 3-carat gem-quality diamonds 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at a cost of less than $100 dollars.

Companies like the Gemesis, Apollo Diamond and others are producing quality diamonds and yet the price of the man-made or cultured diamonds are only about 15 percent less than mined diamonds. Gemesis and Apollo Diamond companies are using diamond jewelry business to finance their entry into the semiconductor industry, which is where the real money is.

As computer chips get faster and smaller they run hotter and hotter. Microprocessor chips can generate up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. If they get much hotter the silicon will simply turn into a puddle. Diamonds can solve this problem because they can stand much higher temperatures than silicon.

Several things must happen before diamonds are going to be used as semiconductors. The first is the cost must come down. With Gemesis reporting in 2003 that the cost of producing a 3-carat diamond was about $100 and Apollo Diamond Company reporting cost of about $5 per carat the first obstacle appears to have been overcome.

A large volume of cheap diamonds is needed. You cannot rely on a steady supply mined diamonds. Since De Beers Diamond Trading Company has monopolized the diamond business for over 115 years by forcing out rivals and by controlling the supply of available diamonds the ability to manufacture diamonds is the answer.

Each diamond must have the same electrical properties and the next. Diamonds are naturally insulators (they do not conduct electricity) and to become semiconductors for the computer industry they must be able to conduct both a negative and positive charge. Scientists have found that if boron in included during the lattice formation of a diamond it will be able to conduct a positive charge. Recently both Israel and France has announced a major breakthrough in manufacturing a negatively charged diamond. Boron is a substance that will also give a diamond a bluish coloration.

Intel uses large silicone wafers that are 1 foot in diameter (slightly over 300 millimeters) for their semiconductor manufacturing process. As of 2003 the Apollo Diamond company has been successful in creating 10 mm square diamond wafers and predicts it will be able to produce 4 inch wafers within five years. Europe and Japan have been investing heavily in diamond semiconductor research. The Japanese government has allocated over $6 million dollars a year to build the first-generation diamond computer chip. If we are not careful the Japanese will become the leaders in the new diamond computer chip industry.

Converting from a silicon based semiconductor to a diamond based semiconductor will not happen over night. Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, Intel’s director of communications circuit research said that it takes us about 10 years of to evaluate a new material. But when it does happen it will be huge and I am ready for mine now. Now if we can only get Microsoft to quit introducing a new operating system every other year or so then perhaps “Diamonds Are Forever” would be true for the business world also.

Author: David Cowley

De Beers was founded in South Africa in 1888 and today is the largest producer and seller of diamonds. Almost from the beginning the De Beers company has had a strangle hold on the diamond industry and a huge advertising budget. Diamonds are not as rare as the advertiser would have you to believe. De Beers keeps a huge stockpile of diamonds and tightly controls supply.

De Beers started the very successful advertising campaign A Diamond Is Forever in 1947. The Advertising Age magazine has voted this to be the most recognizable advertising line of the twentieth century. This advertising campaign was designed to discourage diamonds owners from putting their old diamonds back into the market. The success of this campaign turned diamond into the symbol of eternal love and dramatically increased demand for the gems.

The ability to create cubic zirconium happened in the 1950 but it was not until 1979 that it became economically feasible to mass-produce and use them as a diamond substitute. Only a gemologist can tell the difference between a diamond created by nature and a diamond created in a laboratory.

There are several companies that are investing a lot of time and money in developing a laboratory-grown diamond process and are doing quite well. Because of the diamonds optical, thermal, chemical, and electronic properties, laboratory-grown diamonds have a lot of potential to affect many industries and not just the Jewelry industry.

Gemesis is a company founded in 1996 and based in Sarasota, Fla., that is growing diamonds in high-pressure, high-temperature crystal growing chambers. Each chamber starts with a tiny diamond crystal or diamond seed that is bathed in a molten solution of graphite and a metal-based catalyst at about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and 58,000 atmospheres of pressure. The diamond begins to grow, molecule by molecule and in about three and a half days a gem-quality 2.8 carat rough diamond has been created.

A rough diamond of this size can create a diamond of about 1.5 carats that has been cut, polished, and is ready for mounting in a setting. Naturally occurring colored diamonds will show color because of the trace amounts of impurities in them. Replacing fewer than five atoms per 100,000 of carbon atoms in a diamond crystal lattice with nitrogen atoms gives a diamond with a yellow coloration or tint. These diamonds sell for about $4,000 per carat, which is about one third of the cost of a mined diamond.

The company adopted the term Gemesis Cultured Diamond to distinguish its laboratory-grown diamonds from the mined diamond to assure that consumers were not being misled as to the nature of the product. The first commercial production of gem quality diamonds, were made in 2002.

The company business strategy changed in 2005 from producing from offering individual loose, cut and polished diamonds to retailers to producing and selling only rough stones in lots to jewelry manufactures and designers similarly to the way in which diamond mines sell natural diamonds.

The man-made diamonds made today are of a better quality than the natural ones. A trained jeweler will be unable to determine a real one from a made-one unless he had some very expensive equipment. Insist on a certification before purchasing a diamond for investment purposes. It will tell you the stone’s carat weight, its color and clarity, and its flaws. If the seller is unwilling to supply a certification with the diamond then he may not be telling the truth and you should find someone who will. After all when you want to sell the diamond the new owner will want a certification from you.