Fashion & Beauty
Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but diamonds are this scientist's best creation.
Researchers have discovered a faster way to produce diamonds in the lab. This could revolutionize jewelry.
Regular lab-grown diamonds have been on the market since the 1980s and have exploded in popularity in recent years, but they can take up to 10 weeks to create.
But materials scientist Rodney Ruoff and his research team created it in less than three hours.
Ruoff saw reports that carbon could be formed without a high-pressure environment and wanted to experiment with the ideal environment for diamond formation.
“We thought that if we could find the right conditions, we might be able to make diamonds,” Luoff, a researcher at the Korea Institute of Basic Science, told Science. “So we decided to give it a try.”
His team found that extremely small stones could be produced, as small as 100 nanometers, or the size of a virus.
In the study, published this week in Nature, scientists created a mixture of liquid gallium, nickel, silicon, and iron, heated it to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and exposed it to hydrogen and methane gas to produce carbon gas.
The combination of silicon and carbon gas, a key component of this process, bonded the carbon atoms together and produced tiny crystals.
They learned that a diamond could be formed in 150 minutes, or 2.5 hours. This was a much faster process than the weeks-long process required to create a lab-grown diamond suitable for a wedding ring.
Although at the nanoscale, researchers predict that larger gemstones may eventually be produced, and Ruoff believes other scientists will soon produce their own. .
“Many laboratories around the world are about to start preparing,” he said.
Lab-grown diamonds: are they worth it?
The experiment comes amid a boom in lab-grown diamonds, as many jewelers include more affordable gemstones in engagement ring settings to meet growing demand.
One bride previously told the Post she would rather save money to buy a house than get a natural diamond ring.
Meanwhile, luxury jewelers championing more ethical gemstones say there is little reason to choose natural diamonds, especially since it is difficult to tell the two apart with the naked eye.
“My argument is that in the not-too-distant future, lab-grown diamonds could outperform natural diamonds in the engagement market by a three-to-one ratio,” said Ada Diamond Co., Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Director Lindsay Rainsmith previously told The News. post.
Akshi Jhaveri, jewelry designer and founder of Grown Brilliance, says lab-grown diamonds currently on the market have better color and clarity than more expensive natural diamonds.
“They are clearly superior to natural diamonds,” she told the Post.
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