History of Man Made Diamonds

Executive Summary about Man Made Diamonds by James Chartwell

The incentive to create man made diamonds resulted from the desire of scientists and researchers to improve technology at a much lower cost than expensive mined diamonds.  Valued for their brilliance and luster, diamonds are also extremely hard and durable.  In his short story, “The Diamond Maker”, writer H. G. Wells, also referred to the concept of synthetic diamonds.

Political commentary and science-fiction aside, man made diamonds are produced in two ways: synthetic and simulant.  Synthetics are exact in structure and chemistry as natural diamonds.  The first stone in the history of man made diamonds was Moissanite, a simulant.  The iron contracted on rapid cooling, generating the high pressure required to transform graphite into diamond.

Others duplicated Moissan’s process, but produced only very small diamonds.  Ruff in 1917 and Dr. Willard Hersey in 1926, both “grew” these tiny diamonds.  McPherson College still displays Hersey’s synthetic diamond in Kansas at its museum.

Sweden’s major electrical manufacturing company in Stockholm, ASEA, produced a true synthetic diamond (exact structure and chemistry as a diamond) in 1953.  This formation of a synthetic diamond, however, was never published. So, when General Electric’s Tracy Hall produced in 1954, via a “belt” apparatus, successfully synthesized a diamond, it was that discovery that was published in “Nature” Colleagues easily replicated Hall’s work, and the industrial man made diamond industry was born, dominated for years by DeBeers Industrial Diamonds and GE Superabrasives.  Producing 3 billion carats or 600 metric tons in 2006, the industrial diamond industry annually brings in $1 billion.

As methods of growing synthetic diamonds improves, more and more companies enter the market, especially for diamonds of gemstone quality.  The history of man made diamonds is fraught with accidents.  Apollo Diamonds and the Russians were seeking a way to create synthetic diamonds to aid science.

Man Made Diamond Types

Those “diamonds” were actually silicon carbide (SiC) and are now classified as Moissanite, diamond simulants.  Others attempted to synthesize diamonds, and only recently succeeded in growing a colorless, pure gemstone quality crystal.

The definition of a man made diamond is straightforward.  As mentioned above, diamond simulants like Moissanite are actually made from other material and look like diamonds.

The classification of man made diamonds types is only done to those crystals that are everything diamond-like.  Four categories of man made or synthetic diamonds exist: HPHT grit; HPHT large single crystal diamond; CVD polycrystalline diamond and CVD single crystal diamond.

Only two processes produce these four man made diamond types.  Developed by General Electric in 1955, HPHT (high pressure, high temperature) replicates the conditions that nature uses to create a natural diamond.  HPHT also produces another type of man made diamond, the large single crystal.

CVD polycrystalline diamond is number three on the man made diamond types chart.  CVD polycrystalline diamond is grown flat, instead of in the cubic and single crystal form of natural diamonds, in a wafer of up to 5 millimeters thick.

CVD single crystal diamond is the fourth man made diamond type.  In 2005, a former Bell Labs scientist discovered a way to grow CVD single crystal diamonds pure and colorless, just like a natural diamond.  With applications in science, this new development also skyrocketed this fourth man made diamond type into gemstone quality.

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