It’s too much of a cliché, but still, undeniably diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Diamonds are forever – now that’s a fact as it is one of the hardest substances in the earth. Who would have thought that the material in your pencil tip is same as that of a diamond? 

How are synthetic diamonds made?

Currently, the most popular methods used for making synthetic diamonds are the HPHT or BARS method and CVD method.  HPHT means High Pressure High Temperature method while CVD stands for Chemical Vapor Deposition which is an ultra-low but high temperature procedure.

Synthetic diamond manufacturers employ the HPHT method to create diamonds for jewelry and industrial use. This process tries to mimic how diamonds are grown under the earth, and uses a diamond seed which serves as the growth template, and then a carbon source and catalysts are added to help it grow. The natural process of making diamonds is artificially sped up by a multi anvil compressor.

CVD on the other hand is mostly used for embedding different diamond colors to different material. A rain of carbon in atomic proportions is poured down on a seed under an extremely pressurized environment. As the carbon atoms pour on the seed, the atoms join the diamond structure making it grow.

 Grading with the 4 C’s

Consider the 4C’s when purchasing a diamond.  It is imperative to follow these guidelines.When talking about diamond cut, the usual number of facets is a full 58. A diamond’s sparkle depends on it scintillations.

Diamonds have colors no doubt. Colors are determining values for diamonds. Yellow is the most common diamond color. Different diamond colors are graded in the GIA scale using a set of master stones. It is a tasking challenge to see the different diamond colors and graders are employed to do this comparison.

Clarity is used to evaluate the purity of a diamond. Supposed to be, diamonds are composed only of carbon atoms but impurities still exist.Diamond weight is measured by carat. Diamond trade jargon uses “points” as fractions of a carat while a carat itself is equal to 0.2 grams.

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