Shine on your crazy (Lab) diamond

Oct 01, 2023

One afternoon, I saw this guy outside an American diner at Koramangala in Bengaluru. He was dressed in a beige jacket and black tapered denims, holding the hand of his girl, who looked like she had come out for lunch from her corporate office. As they enjoyed bhelpuri, the guy knelt down, pulled out a shiny solitaire from his pocket, and proposed to the girl on the crowded road.

In my mind, the hit Taylor Swift song ‘Love story’ started playing.

He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said

"Marry me, Juliet. You’ll never have to be alone.

I love you, and that's all I really know."

Did she say yes or no? But the question in my mind was different: "Was it a natural diamond, or a lab-grown one?"

This took me back to December 12, 2022, when I first learnt about lab-grown diamonds or LGDs. And last week, I flew to Surat, the diamond capital of India, to see how they are created.

Regular diamonds are formed 150-200 km below the surface of the earth over billions of years, and then mined in dangerous conditions. Most are then brought to Surat. This teeming Gujarat city is where 92% of the world's diamonds are cut. LGD is a new industry here.

Back story

I am not into diamonds. Growing up, when my friends stopped by jewellery stores, I would gravitate to a stationery shop and gape at fancy pencils, erasers and diaries.

I owe my curiosity about LGDs to my work as a business journalist — in her latest budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman described LGDs as a high employment potential industry and announced schemes to foster R&D at an IIT.

A colleague piqued my curiosity further as she said: "A diamond is technically 99.95 percent carbon. It is chemistry, so, yes, it can be made in a lab without digging the earth and causing human suffering. But isa lab-grown diamond entirely environment-friendly? Won't it take intense energy to simulate the heat and pressure conditions under which conventional diamonds are formed inside the earth?"

But the industry is growing fast. According to the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council based in Mumbai, the provisional gross export of polished LGDs for April-December 2022 grew by 44.10% on Rs 6,865.22 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Inside the lab

Surat is situated on the banks of the Tapi river. Despite rapid industrialisation, it has retained its cultural charm. It is colourful. People are sweet and hospitable. Street food options are endless. There is greenery everywhere. And the best part? People don't lose their calm in traffic jams — they don't really honk much.

I arrived at Devngi Gems’ office in Surat at 12.30 pm. Managing director Sanat Vaviya ushered me in. He briefed me about the science behind LGD and claimed that the process is 80-90% less damaging to the environment than diamond mining. "Our lab is also solar-powered," he informed.

My attention was soon interrupted by a brown curtain drawn across a glass window. Sanat walked up and pulled the curtain aside. There it was — their lab. It was dimly lit. Four people were cleaning the shelves. In the middle of the room were four boxy machines. A food warmer-kind of dish set, akin to what we see on buffet counters, was placed on top of each. This is the MPCVD (microwave plasma chemical vapour deposition) diamond-making machine, Sanat explained.

Since only highly trained technicians are allowed inside the lab, one of the machines was wheeled into his office for my viewing. Sanat opened the lid off ‘the buffet dish set’ and said as many as nine diamonds can be cultured at a time. "There's also an LED screen to see what is cooking inside," he said.

Carbon seeds

To develop LGDs, square transparent chips called carbon seeds are placed in a microwave chamber and superheated till a glowing plasma ball forms over them. This setup is left undisturbed for 15-16 days toproduce a batch of 1-1.5 carat diamonds, and about 6-8 weeks for 10-carat diamonds. It is an automated process. The progress is monitored by technicians on screens outside the lab. These machines are dusted meticulously during downtime.

Every player in the LGD industry is using "unique recipes and technology", I learnt from Sanat. Perhaps why other LGD makers turned down my request for a factory visit.

There are two common processes. HPHT (high pressure/high temperature) mimics the way the diamonds grow in nature, subjecting carbon to high temperatures and pressing it together. On the other hand, CVD (chemical vapour deposition) works on a seed crystal, exposing it to hydrocarbon gas to form diamond layers. Sanat's facility, like most others in India, uses the CVD machine, which at a price tag of Rs 1.49 crore is cheaper than HPHT.

The cost of production was at one time a deal-breaker in the pursuit of lab diamonds. Google gives youtrivia: The world's first proven synthetic diamond was created at a General Electric research lab in 1954. They simulated the pressure and temperature below the earth, using a hydraulic press. However,not only were these LGDs too small for gemstone use, but they were twice the price of the natural ones. The lab diamonds were, thus, relegated to industrial applications, such as to make drill bits.

"But now, advances in technology have made LGD jewellery economical," said Sanat.

What comes out of the microwave setup is a rack of black cubes with a translucent centre and jagged edges. Nothing like the dazzling diamonds we know. The translucent centre is cut and processed to retrieve the diamond. The diamond pieces left behind after cutting are repurposed as carbon seeds to grow diamonds further. "The purer the diamond the seed is cut from, the purer the diamond that grows out of it," Sanat pointed out.

Standard process

A month before I visited Sanat's lab, I was in Surat to see the processing of natural diamonds. I visited a facility spread over multiple floors in a large building. It had a large team of employees because most work is done manually. Technology was deployed only to study the quality of each rough diamond, and to cut it precisely using a laser.

When I was shown rough diamonds, that is, in their natural state after they are dug out from the mines, they looked like shards of glass, opaque and rugged. Selecting the roughs, as these diamonds are called, and sorting them on the basis of four Cs (carat, cut, colour and clarity) calls for special skills.

The overall quality determines where these will be used — in industries, for manufacturing, or as jewellery. Softwares determine the best ways to optimise the roughs.

The facets of the almost-ready diamond are polished to reflect an ample amount of light. The more reflective the diamond, the more sparkly your final piece will be. The emotional value of a diamond has a lot to do with its brilliance.

Trust factor

I visited Surat's City Light area to learn how jewellers were responding to the churn in the industry.

I visited Priti Sheth who runs Maiora Diamonds, an LGD jewellery store in Surat. She said LGDs were cheaper by at least 50%, and came with a buyback option. Return on investment is lower than with natural diamonds as the market size is small at the moment, she added.

Telling an LGD from an earth-mined diamond is impossible, even for a trained eye. You have to check what is inscribed on its girdle or test it in a gemological lab, owners of jewellery shops in Surat told me.

Chemically, physically, and optically, LGDs are identical to natural ones. I held each one in my hand and observed them closely for minutes. They were both as sparkly and as sturdy. LGDs are certified by bodies like the International Gemological Institute (IGI) and the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) for their colour, clarity, cut grading scales and process used. For fostering trust, some brands inscribe their diamonds with the words ‘lab grown’ and provide an authentication certificate in yellow, an industry standard. But these assurances are yet to dispel the notion that LGDs are inferior to natural diamonds, Priti admitted. LGDs are likened to moissanite, cubic zirconia, white sapphire, which are ‘diamond simulants’ and look like diamonds. However, they lack the sparkle and durability of a diamond and are easily identifiable, Sanat explained.

NRIs, and Indians in their late 20s and mid-30s who could not earlier afford diamonds, are going in for LGDs, I gathered. "Now they are able to buy a big diamond for the price of a small one," Priti added.

People speak

Zero-waste entrepreneur Sahar Mansoor opted for an LGD engagement ring. "It was an ethical choice to go with something that has less environmental and social problems associated with it," says the Bengalurean. She is not bothered about the resale value. "It will probably become an heirloom," she said.

For Prerona Sengupta, it was about the price difference. The 24-year-old bought a pair of 0.5 carat LGD studs from Abu Dhabi for Rs 8,000. Its natural equivalent would have come for Rs 80,000, the research associate in Bengaluru has learnt. "My dad was curious (about the LGD concept). But he didn't see it worthy of investment," she said.

But purists aren't sold on the idea of LGDs yet. My hosts at Surat's natural diamond processing facility argued that a mined diamond is not a commodity, but a work of art. They said only 10% of mined diamonds are chosen for use as gemstones, and a diamond passes at least a thousand hands across the globe before it adorns a woman.

Their question: Will a woman feel special and proud if she is wearing an artificially produced diamond?

Diamond ownership is about sentiment and status whereas gold is also favoured as an investment.

A bit of history about how the ‘need’ was created. When the sale of diamonds fell because of war and economic turmoil, De Beers hired N W Ayer agency to revive interest in it. Copywriter Frances Gerety from Philadelphia was asked to come up with a slogan to capture the romance and security coming from owning a diamond. She scribbled something on a piece of paper and showed it to her associates the next day. Herteam was unsure about the strange grammar, but approved it. That's when "A diamond is forever" was born in 1947. It went on to be hailed as ‘the slogan of the 20th century’.

That is when the indestructible stone became the symbol of indestructible love, something until then limited to royalty and the ultra rich. That is also when popping a diamond ring — as I saw the boy in Koramangala do — became associated with proposing.

Wallet factor

Manufacturers and sellers say lab-grown diamonds are cheaper than mined diamonds by at least 50-70%. The cost of producing a rough, unprocessed LGD can be as low as Rs 600.

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