In recent years, synthetic diamonds have become the object of heated debate, giving rise to many questions to which industry participants often give contradictory answers.
What are synthetic diamonds? How are they produced? Can they really replace natural ones and are indistinguishable from them? What is the real cost of synthetic diamonds? What market share will they occupy in the field of "lab-grown" diamonds, and is it worth buying them at all, and if so, why?
In this article we will answer these questions, starting with an explanation of the process of creating synthetic precious stones.
Technology and production history:
As you know, diamonds are widely used not only in the jewelry industry, but also have applications in industry.
Today 97% of diamonds used in industry are synthetic.
Most of the mined diamonds do not meet the high standards of the jewelry industry and are used for the production of tools (for example, grinding or drilling tools). Therefore, it is not surprising that scientists began to look for ways to create diamonds in the laboratory.
In 1956, HPHT (High Pressure High Temperature) technology was developed, which, in fact, imitated the natural process of diamond formation, where graphite turns into diamond under the influence of high pressure and temperature in the upper layers of the earth's mantle.
However, the results of this technology were far from perfect. The crystals were small and of poor quality, which made them unsuitable for use in the jewelry industry.
Scientific research and experiments continued, and in the 1980s a completely new technology appeared, called CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) - a method of deposition of carbon particles from a plasma cloud. This technology has been improved many times, and about ten years ago the diamonds obtained with its help began to have sufficient quality and affordable prices for use in the jewelry industry.
This breakthrough made it possible to create diamonds that are significantly cheaper in cost than natural diamonds, while maintaining similar characteristics.
Synthetic diamonds began to actively conquer the market, and this process continues to this day.
Market participants were divided into two camps. Some believed that natural and synthetic diamonds represent two different markets that rarely overlap, especially in the jewelry segment. While supporters of the second point of view saw synthetic diamonds as a serious competitor for natural stones, at least in the segment of diamond jewelry of the middle price range. This dispute has been going on for many years, and although the vector of development is becoming more and more obvious, it has not yet been completed.
Some industry participants have invested heavily in the production of CVD diamonds, considering them the future. Since the beginning of this path, some of them have even achieved good results. Manufacturers make considerable efforts to convince consumers that synthetic diamonds are no different from natural ones, while they are more affordable and their production does not harm the environment. But, according to some, the idea of considering these diamonds as "environmentally friendly" is not entirely true, since their production requires a significant amount of electricity. While such stones, of course, are not "blood" diamonds extracted using slave labor of poor inhabitants of African countries.
In general, marketers are developing new ideas, coming up with all the new advantages of synthetic diamonds. However, there are still disputes about what this product should be called. The phrase "synthetic or artificial diamonds" causes a negative attitude among most buyers, as it is associated with a fake.
With aggressive advertising attracting world-class stars, synthetic stones really had good prospects in terms of winning a part of the market from natural stones. However, the largest producer of natural diamonds in the world, De Beers, intervened in this situation and finally determined the future of synthetic diamonds, directing them into the field of expensive jewelry, unable to compete with natural diamonds. A few years ago, the LightBox project was presented, which offers a 1 carat CVD diamond of high quality for only $ 800.
To understand the prospects for the development of the synthetic diamonds market, it is useful to refer to the history of other minerals.
For example, rubies and emeralds began to be synthesized more than 100 years ago, and at the beginning there was a debate about what role they would play in the market. Over time, natural stones have only increased their value, while synthetics are used in the cheapest jewelry, and the price difference today is enormous.
Simple logic suggests that natural diamonds, limited in quantity, will become more expensive over time, as the extraction of raw materials will become more expensive due to the depletion of deposits, and their production will decrease. This, however, will not happen immediately, since the known reserves will last for several more decades. At the same time, with the development of technology, the cost of production of synthetic diamonds will decrease, as it happens today. If a few years ago the average price of a carat was from $ 3,000 to $4,000, today it has dropped to $800 and even lower. There are, of course, sellers trying to sell synthetics at a high price, but there are fewer and fewer of them.
Buying synthetics, the buyer risks getting a stone that in a few years may cost only a tenth of its value.
It is incorrect to say that synthetic diamonds are completely identical to natural ones, because otherwise there would be no way to distinguish them.
In addition, many women prefer real stones, as natural diamonds have a strong emotional value. The realization that you are carrying a stone formed in the bowels of the earth and lying there for hundreds of millions of years, extracted with great difficulty and cut by craftsmen and growing in price every year, will never replace the stories of marketers about environmentally friendly methods of their production.
