India will soon be self-reliant in lab grown diamonds that go into jewellery making and for industrial purposes thanks to IIT-Madras’ India Centre for Lab Grown Diamond (InCent-LGD) research lab.

InCent-LGD will produce good quality, 2 square cm single crystal diamond seeds/wafers in the coming months, MS Ramachandra Rao, Professor, Department of Physics, IIT-Madras and Head, InCent-LGD, told businessline.

These seeds/wafers are imported mainly from China otherwise, he added.

“I won’t really say it will be electronic grade diamond yet, but it will be a good quality, 2 sq. cm large, diamond seed plate, or a wafer. By the end of 2026, the Centre will also be ready with its indigenous Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) process for lab-grown diamond production and high pressure high temperature (HPHT) machines to make rough diamonds,” he added.

The project is to make India number one in producing diamonds. China produces diamonds by ‘High Pressure High Temperature’ technique.

The top five companies in the world that produces HPHT machines is from China. They produce these industry grade diamonds all the way from micron-sized powders for abrasive applications to milli meter sized and beyond for jewellery purposes, Rao said.

“We are fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative that he gave two years ago to make India the number one country in producing lab grown diamonds (LGD),” he said. The LGD is a technology and innovation-driven emerging sector with high employment potential. These environment-friendly diamonds have optically and chemically have the same properties as natural diamonds, he added.

Diamonds in jewellery are just a small part of the big story. It is their use as a next-generation semiconducting and quantum material that holds more value.

Rao says that diamonds are a versatile ‘ultra-wide bandgap materials’ that can be integrated with, and complemented along with other semiconducting materials like Gallium Nitride and Silicon Carbide for many electronic applications. The extreme hardness of diamonds makes them useful in various coating technologies to improve the life of cutting tools, he said.

The Centre in 2023 provided a research grant of ₹242 crore, over a period of five years, to the centre to work on LDG seeds and machines.

“Once the indigenous CVD machine gets ready, the technology will be transferred to the private sector for a scale-up”, he said. There will also be start-ups coming out of InCent-LGD. The lab is also developing the electronic components required to run the CVD machines and this type of indigenous development is very unique in India, he added.

Published on June 16, 2025