Diamonds can be created, indeed they are manufactured in large quantities. The first synthetic diamond was made by General Electric of the USA about 1955. For many years now, over half the world's diamonds have been manufactured rather than mined. Many people think the word synthetic means fake, "not real", man made or "not natural". Strangely enough there are some of its dictionary definitions, but the word synthesis actually means put together or assembled.
Synthetic diamond is a diamond produced through chemical or physical processes in a factory. Like naturally occurring diamond it is composed of a three-dimensional carbon crystal. Due to its extreme physical properties, synthetic diamond is used in many industrial applications, and has the potential to become a serious disruptive technology in many new application areas such as electronics and medicine. Synthetic diamond is also called industrial diamond, manufactured diamond, artificial diamond or cultured diamond. Synthetic diamond is not the same as Diamond-like Carbon, DLC, which is amorphous hard carbon, or diamond imitation, which can be made of other materials such as cubic zirconia or silicon carbide.
Synthetic diamond is a diamond produced through chemical or physical processes in a factory. Like naturally occurring diamond it is composed of a three-dimensional carbon crystal. Due to its extreme physical properties, synthetic diamond is used in many industrial applications, and has the potential to become a serious disruptive technology in many new application areas such as electronics and medicine. Synthetic diamond is also called industrial diamond, manufactured diamond, artificial diamond or cultured diamond. Synthetic diamond is not the same as Diamond-like Carbon, DLC, which is amorphous hard carbon, or diamond imitation, which can be made of other materials such as cubic zirconia or silicon carbide.
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Last Updated: Sep 2009
Last Updated: Sep 2009
What are Synthetic Diamonds?
There are two main methods to produce synthetic diamond. The original method is High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) and is still the most widely used method because of its relative low cost. It uses large presses that can weigh a couple of hundred tons to produce a pressure of 5 GPa at 1,500 degrees Celsius to reproduce the conditions that create natural diamond inside the Earth. The second method, using chemical vapor deposition or CVD, was invented in the 1980s, and is basically a method creating a carbon plasma on top of a substrate onto which the carbon atoms deposit to form diamond.
A coating treatment applies a thin film of synthetic diamond to the surface of a diamond simulant. This gives the simulated diamond certain characteristics of real diamond, including higher resistance to wear and scratching, higher thermal conductivity, and lower electrical conductivity. While resistance to wear is a legitimate goal of this technique, some employ it in order to make diamond simulants more difficult to detect through conventional means, which may be fraudulent if they are attempting to represent a simulated diamond as real.
A coating treatment applies a thin film of synthetic diamond to the surface of a diamond simulant. This gives the simulated diamond certain characteristics of real diamond, including higher resistance to wear and scratching, higher thermal conductivity, and lower electrical conductivity. While resistance to wear is a legitimate goal of this technique, some employ it in order to make diamond simulants more difficult to detect through conventional means, which may be fraudulent if they are attempting to represent a simulated diamond as real.
