How lab-grown diamonds could bring down the traditional market
Nearly a dozen companies worldwide are creating diamonds that are all but indistinguishable from mined stones, a worrying thought for gem dealers
At a drab office park in a Washington suburb, in an unmarked building’s windowless lab, Yarden Tsach is growing diamonds. Not rhinestones or cubic zirconia, but real diamonds. In a matter of eight weeks, inside a gas-filled chamber, he replicates a process that usually takes from one billion to 3.3 billion years at a depth between 140 and 190 kilometres in the Earth’s mantle. Carbon atom by carbon atom, he creates nature’s hardest and – if decades of advertisements are to be believed – most romantic stone.
No outsiders get to witness this genesis, though. WD Lab Grown Diamonds, where Tsach is chief technology officer, guards its approach as zealously as its address. These are the measures a company takes when it’s a target – of fierce competitors, potential jewel thieves and a traditional industry that would very much like it to go away.
“Everything is after us,” Tsach says.
Until the middle of the past century, all the world’s diamonds originated in the Earth’s mantle. Tremendous temperatures and pressures force carbon atoms to link up in a flawless, three-dimensional lattice that is incredibly strong and equally effective at bending and bouncing light. The result is a crystal – a gem in the rough.
Yet getting those stones up to the surface has required an enormous – and sometimes bloody – effort. The environmental impact of diamond mining is so sprawling that it can be seen from space. The humanitarian cost of some gems is also staggering: children forced to work in mines, “blood diamonds” sold to finance wars.