The South China Morning Post writes that the dominant diamond player De Beers is reacting badly to the arrival of large numbers of good, tiny, lab-grown diamonds. The synthetics challenge the widely-promoted assertion that diamond prices only go up. However, labs are now able to produce chemically identical gem-quality stones, indistinguishable by the naked eye from mined diamonds, in quantities pushing 200k carats of diamonds per month. Synthetic diamonds still only account for %1 of rough diamond sales globally, but that is expected to expand to between 7.5% to 15% by 2020.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday November 19 2018, @08:20PM
Well, manufactured diamonds can be distinguished from mined diamonds, as mined diamonds have more imperfections, especially when viewed with a loupe or microscope, and can fluoresce differently when exposed to UV light, and can also phosphoresce differently. You can also discern differing patterns in polarised light.
More details here: https://www.gia.edu/identifying-lab-grown-diamonds [gia.edu]
I hope diamond prices drop, as diamond has very useful physical properties. There's a nice parlour* trick where you can use a diamond window (used in expensive spectroscopy equipment [1] [e6.com],[2] [ddk.com],[3] [sciencedirect.com]) as a knife to cut through an ice cube [youtube.com] - it transmits heat so well, it uses the heat from your hand to melt the ice. I would like to be able to demonstrate that at reasonable cost.
*For parlours with easy access do diamond windows used for spectroscopy. They are Not Cheap.