Gemesis (synthetic Diamonds)
Q: Related to marriage: I'm thinking DeBeers's time is about up. There was a
recent article in our paper about "Gemesis," a local company that makes
diamonds. From that article, it looks like the problems with manmade
diamonds have been pretty much solved. According to that article, there
are only three machines in the U.S. that can tell a manmade diamond from a
natural one -- and the only way jewelers can tell they have a Gemesis stone,
is because the company etches their logo on their stones. (The logo is
visible only at 200x magnification.)
This article slants somewhat the other way, pooh-poohing manmade jems. I
figure, regardless of the current quality of these jems, they're only going
to improve in future. Since manmade diamonds cost 50%-75% less than natural
diamonds, Debeers is either finished, or they're going to have to cut
prices.
I love this line:
"Disagreeing is William Boyajian, president of the Gemological Institute of
America, who advises consumers not to worry."
Worry about what? Paying half-price for real diamonds? And they are real.
I think in the future, buying a natural diamond will make about as much
sense as buying naturally-occuring aluminum (which is very expensive and
rare).
A:contraption about the size of a washing machine is needed to
produce the synthetic diamonds. The machine squeezes a shard of diamond at
850,000 pounds of pressure per square inch and at a temperature of 3,000
degrees Fahrenheit. Graphite and secret-ingredient catalysts are added to
stimulate carbon growth around the shard. It takes about 50 hours to make a
diamond of at least 1.6 carats.
Reza Abbaschian, chairman of UF's Materials Science and Engineering
Department, says, "Even with a magnifying glass, a professional jeweler
could not tell the difference between our synthetic diamonds and naturally
occurring ones."
Disagreeing is William Boyajian, president of the Gemological Institute
of America, who advises consumers not to worry. "Synthetic diamonds are easy
for a professional jeweler to identify. We don't see synthetics penetrating
the marketplace since gem-quality synthetic diamonds are still rare."
Both synthetic and naturally occurring diamonds are 100 percent carbon. On
the atomic level, natural diamonds can include paired nitrogen atoms, while
synthetics have single nitrogen atoms.
Because of the presence of unpaired nitrogen, synthetics tend to have a
yellowish hue. Sometimes this can be seen with the naked eye. However,
natural yellow diamonds do exist.
Synthetics frequently include metal, such as nickel, iron and titanium,
which are used either as catalysts during the diamond-making process or to
absorb the nitrogen.
Naturally