Science and technology may have just found an answer to the acute shortage of mined diamonds worldwide. High quality IIA diamonds (a rare grade with virtually no impurities) can be grown in research facilities globally, but their marketability has not really taken off as it should.
This is due to lack of awareness about their utility as jewellery, and in wide applications in industry and medicine.
The global diamond industry faces a severe short supply of rough diamonds, with production sliding from the peak levels achieved since 2004-05. Most diamond processing nations like India and China are hard-pressed to secure their share of the diminishing rough diamond supply. But science seems to have found a way out.
PATHBREAKING PROCESS
The growth of diamonds through microwave plasma chemical vapour deposition (MPCVD) has widened prospects of lab-grown diamonds in gem applications as well as in scientific and high-tech areas. Though the MPCVD technique has been in existence for over ten years now to grow small single crystal, colourless diamonds, the scalable growth of consistent quality diamonds has been almost impossible to achieve until recently.
Frost & Sullivan says in a recent study, “Grown Diamonds - Shaping the Future of the Diamond Industry”, that leading industry firms have now been able to integrate high-end research with effective management of a formidable supply-chain. This has enabled the scalable production of high-quality, single-crystal, colourless, lab-grown diamonds.
Tom Chatham of Chatham Created Gems & Diamonds Inc. notes that “success in scaling up production of diamonds using CVD technology requires scientific know-how, continuous flow of funds and a passion for years of research.”
Like most new and potentially disruptive technology, MPCVD grown diamonds are seen both as an opportunity and as a threat. As a consumer product, the lab-grown diamond industry first needs to educate consumers about the real benefits of grown diamonds. “The confusion in terminology of grown diamonds may have an impact on end-buyers in the gem application market,” says Mike McMahon, CEO of SCIO Diamond Technology Corporation.
MPCVD doesn’t involve synthesis at any stage of the diamond growth process, and leads to the formation of diamond in its native element form, just like earth-derived diamonds. And this is the most important aspect of lab-grown diamonds to be understood by consumers – that they are no different from the mined diamonds. They are popular in the markets in the US.
Grown MPCVD diamonds, unlike diamond simulants such as Moissanite, are identical to earth-derived diamonds in terms of physical, chemical and optical properties. In fact, these ‘IIA’ diamonds are very pure, comprising less than two per cent of the world’s earth-derived diamonds.
Let’s look at the growth process of lab-grown diamonds. It begins with a small diamond seed, placed under controlled conditions mimicking those that give rise to natural diamonds in the earth’s core. The carbon atoms, provided using a source of carbon, disperse and reform around the seed, growing the diamond atom by atom and layer by layer, just like nature's geological processes. “Grown diamonds are real diamonds and are physically, chemically and optically identical to mined diamonds”, says a technical director at one of the lab growing diamond facilities in Singapore.
The crucial difference, however, is that they are environmentally friendly, as the process that grows them produces half the carbon footprint of mined diamonds.
Currently, these diamonds are being used in surgical knives for eye surgery, high-technology industries for ultra-precision cutting tools, high power laser windows and jewellery.
SUPPLY OF DIAMONDS
So, they may well fulfil the cherished desire of scientists and technologists to have diamonds at their disposal for making specialised devices. The grown diamonds may ultimately find inroads into the future applications such as quantum computing, where diamonds can be used to store data and design ultra-secure computers or in the medical research field; these diamonds can be used to power electron microscopes.
For India, a reduced supply of rough diamonds and their higher prices have hit the sector very badly, leading to loss of business. Several lakh have been rendered unemployed. Rough diamond imports slipped from 154.20 million carats in 2010-11 to 131.40 million carats in 2011-12.
In 2004 or 2005 imports were as high as 182 million carats. Correspondingly, exports too have shrunk.
Also, most African countries initiated the beneficiation programme, discontinuing the outsourcing of rough cut diamonds to India, while setting up cutting and polishing shops at home. Several attempts by Indian traders to secure rough supply have failed in the past.
According to a Bain report, by 2020 the worldwide cumulative shortage of diamonds will touch 72 million carats. Traders believe that lab-grown diamonds can reduce shortages. As grown diamonds find acceptance in Western markets, it becomes a good sign. The fact they are conflict-free, eco-friendly and sustainable — creating economic growth opportunity from jewellery to hi-technology industry – makes its future promising.
(The author is former Economics Editor, PTI.)