My company buys a lot of diamonds - for industrial use, not jewelry related :) The falling price of synthetic diamonds has been a huge boon. Several processes I do right now would be impractical without the use of "low-cost" diamonds - air quotes because they are still not exactly cheap. So it is obviously in my interest for consumers to switch to lab-grown diamonds and thus drive volume up and prices down.
At the same time, I do understand the sentiment around wanting a mined diamond. The whole idea behind a diamond engagement ring is a marketing exercise backed up by a cartel, so if you're gonna participate in the ritual you might as well do it right. There are silly backstories buried in every part of human society today, from "some king did it and everyone copied him" to "this piece of land got special status a thousand years ago which accidentally let it become its own country" to "my grandmother was too poor to do XYZ the right way so we still do it her way." That's just part and parcel of being human.
> Calling them "lab-grown" is part of the propaganda against them.
Indeed: Even the article perpetuates this:
"Whereas a two-carat real diamond engagement ring might cost $35,000, Oymakas says a two-carat lab-grown diamond with the same clarity and colour could only be about $3,500."
My wife wanted a sapphire and we met during Ph D research. It's straight up not possible to pay more then like, a dollar for a synthetic sapphire so that's what's in her ring.
Again, I'm all for lab grown diamonds for both consumer and industrial use.
I think "lab-grown" is a pretty neutral term, and it is also scientifically accurate in the case of CVD and other diamonds where the process really is "growing" the diamonds. There are certainly other terms for them that sound more derogatory such as "synthetic" or "artificial" diamond.
Synthetic diamonds definitely need a marketing glow up. Current names are man-made, lab grown, and synthetic diamonds. Instead we could lean into how cool the HPHT and CVD processes are and have - giga forged diamonds (gigapascal pressure of HPHT), plasma coalesced diamonds (CVD process), or even human forged diamonds (highlighting technological triumph required to achieve these).
Humans seem to have a bias against "unnatural" language. Synthetic, artificial, man-made, these all evoke negative emotions in most people unfortunately.
I thought the process used to grow them in a lab was somewhat different than the process used in nature. Labs use Chemical Vapor Deposition while nature uses high pressure and high temperature. The lab grows the diamond crystal while nature squeezes a lump of carbon into one.
Also part and parcel of being a human being is logic and empathy. Anyone who possesses one of these traits, never mind both of them, should find it easy to choose the product that isn't literally the product of human suffering an exploitation.
Blood diamonds are terrible, but the overwhelming majority of diamonds produced these days are not blood diamonds relying on slave labor, they're mass-mined products relying on colossal-scale industrial machinery. That's why Russia is #1 and Canada is #3 in worldwide diamond production today: even the world's largest diamond mines have 1-3k employees vs. massive production.
That's not to paper over the issues with the industry (environmental, poor working conditions, poor pay etc) - but those are more generally applied to any mined product. I'd be willing to bet that your average set of modern electronics cause far more suffering than your average diamond: see conflict resources such as tantalum, tin, tungsten, gold.
Isn't industrial diamond use already a lot higher than jewelry use? It seems unlikely that consumers switching to lab-grown would "drive volume up and prices down" in any meaningful way - except perhaps for the jewelry grade stones themselves.
That includes stuff like diamond grit. You don’t care about the color or clarity of grit. Tenth of a carat on up? You care about that for jewelry use. And that translates into better non-grit industrial diamonds as well.
Is your company in abrasives or machining? I'm curious because I assume that lab-grown is actually preferred over mined because the crystalline structure may be more homogenous.
I can't go into too much detail, but there are actually a few things: our main use is machining and one of our other uses is for the extreme thermal conductivity. Diamond is an incredible material period.
I am not an expert so take this with a grain of salt, but for what I do I have seen no difference between flawless natural diamond and flawless lab grown diamond, the difference is that the flawless natural diamonds are almost always far more expensive.
If I was shopping for a near flawless diamond engagement ring and someone was offering me the lab-made version.
I think I’d be quite swayed towards the lab ones knowing that there were engineers who used them for industrial use and found them exactly the same.
Also being much cheaper, I’d likely spend money towards getting a better grade lab-grown diamond than I could afford with a mined diamond.
If I was the lab-grown industry I’d also be actively attempting to shift the narrative around the term real, and say ones mined one is lab made, both are real. But that’s its own fight I’m sure.
In my opinion, diamonds really are the best jewel for a engagement ring. They are really the only gem that will really never chip, fade, or cloud over time. Alternatives like moissanite are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re just not quite as good on the longevity scale. When you buy someone a diamond, they could literally do zero maintenance on it and 100 years later they still have a diamond that looks basically exactly the same.
At the same time, I do understand the sentiment around wanting a mined diamond. The whole idea behind a diamond engagement ring is a marketing exercise backed up by a cartel, so if you're gonna participate in the ritual you might as well do it right. There are silly backstories buried in every part of human society today, from "some king did it and everyone copied him" to "this piece of land got special status a thousand years ago which accidentally let it become its own country" to "my grandmother was too poor to do XYZ the right way so we still do it her way." That's just part and parcel of being human.