By Vladimir Teslenko, candidate of chemical sciences

For over two thousand years, natural gem-quality diamonds have been in firm demand.
In the 1950s, methods of producing laboratory-grown diamonds and substances with nearly identical properties, which cannot be distinguished by an average diamond jewelry consumer, appeared. At the beginning of the 21st century, laboratory researches reached the level of qualified marketing. A number of domestic and foreign companies announced plans for the industrial production and marketing of gem-quality synthetic diamonds and synthetic diamond jewelry. Due to the trade secret regimen and marketing bluff surrounding jewelry synthetics, a tensed atmosphere was created on the jewelry market. The prime cost of synthetics production, factory facilities, sales channels, and the quantity of masked retail sales were obscured, though their role in the future of the global diamond business was fundamentally important.    

Copyrights and patent rights in the field of synthetics

In the International Patent Law, synthesis of diamond monocrystals is referred to in class B 01 J 3/06. The database of the Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trade Marks (http://www.fips.ru) numbers 142 patents applied for by Russian and foreign applicants. Taking into account cross-patenting of inventions in developed countries, we can suppose that there are nearly 1000 patents in force in this field worldwide.

Still, all patents represent a weak basis for license agreements. In fact, all patents under consideration refer to rough diamonds — a substance with only intermediate commercial significance and no direct use, until polished. 

A synthetic diamond has to be a) cut and b) set into a consumer item. No one in the world can assert his copyright through a double processing chain.

Therefore, such patents are only of engineering and scientific importance and serve only to add the authority of concrete specialists. As experience has shown, owners of ideas rather than patents are appreciated in the world.  It is brainpower, not the patents and licences of them, which are in demand in the world market and are subject to the supply-demand factor. Thus, for example, one of the inventors of BARS technology, Boris Feigelson, who made his discoveries in Novosibirsk, was invited at the beginning of the 1990s to Belorussia as a director of the factory in Anino. Later, he was invited to Moscow (company Bazis), in the middle of the 1990s, he came to the American company Gemisis, and at the beginning of 2000s, he was already invited to the U.S. innovative incubator Science Application International Corp. Nowadays,   Feigelson works at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, one of the biggest centres of the U.S. military-industrial complex.

World synthetic production facilities

There are two main methods to produce synthetic diamonds.
1. Growing a diamond seed close to a balanced phase boundary of a diamond-graphite under high pressure and at high temperature;
2. Layer growing from strongly disbalanced hydrocarbon plasma.
The first method uses a pressure of 5 GPa at 1,500 degrees Celsius. In international literature this is known as HTHP (high temperature high pressure), i.e. “high pressure + high temperature.”
The second method is used to produce diamonds under decreased pressure and at high temperature from elementary hydrocarbon like methane; it is known as CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition). This is not a strict name, because gas is only supplied to a reactor, and in a reaction zone gas is decomposed into plasma; it would be more correct to call it “plasma synthesis.”  

1. HTHP Method
The HTHP method is scientifically defined as the “method of crystallization of diamond from carbonic solution in the conditions of temperature gradient in metallic melt on the basis of iron and nickel, using high pressures.” 

1.1 The Russian BARS technology

The BARS technology (a non-press device “The slot sphere”) was invented between 1989-1991 by scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In the centre of the device, there is a cylinder reaction cell of about 2 cm3 made of ceramics on the zirconium oxide basis. A cell is set into a cubic working substance pressed by VK10 hard alloy elements. An octahedral cavity is pressed by 8 steel sectors. After mounting, the whole assembly is locked in a disc-type barrel with a diameter of a bit more than 1 meter. The barrel is filled with oil, which pressurizes with the help of a pump, and pressure spreads to the central cell. The central cell is heated up by a coaxial graphite heater. A temperature regime is measured with the help of thermocouple with an external automatic control.  
In 2007, there were about 300 BARS devices in the world. The main owners are 1) Adamas BGU (Minsk) – 118 (36 more are being installed); 2) the U.S. company Gemesis – 100 devices; 3) High Optical Technologies company (Moscow) – 30 devices.
A typical process of one carat diamond synthesis takes about 100 hours, and unique processes take up to 300 hours (sometimes 5-6 carat diamonds can be produced). The device average output (allowing for  failed and idle launches) is three carats per month. At 70% machine utilization, 7 thousands carats of synthetic diamonds of one carat each can be produced in the world annually. It means that diamond production can reach up to 4 thousands carats of stones weighting 0.30-0.50 carats of light yellow or brown colour. Of course, for the world market of diamond jewelry, this is an insignificant value not exceeding even 0.1%.

1.2 Chinese FG technology

In 1992, the Zhanjiang high-tech zone was created in China to accomplish the ambitious task of developing cheap technology and establishing the industrial production of synthetic diamonds on a scale which could meet the demand of the country and the world as well. The Chinese asked for help from the Kiev Institute of Ultra-hard Materials. As a result, the Chinese developed a full spectre of necessary equipment, in which a spacer for diamond synthesis appeared to be a real “diamond.” For monocrystals synthesis, the FG technology (film growth) was mastered in China. The Chinese have managed to develop a technology on the basis of this method and learned how to get monocrystals of up to one carat of good industrial quality, but of intense yellow-brown color. Production facilities and volumes are unknown.

2. CVD Method

The most popular companies using this technology are: Element Six (De Beers affiliate), Apollo Diamond (U.S.), and the geophysical laboratory of the Carnegie Institute. There are an estimated 100 synthesis plants in the world, the majority of which are technically oriented. 
Only Apollo Diamond is aimed at jewelry — USA Today magazine reports that the company has five synthesis plants, which can produce 5 carats per week. The equipment allows for the production of mainly brown diamonds from bright to dark colors. 

Mechanisms of connection to diamond pipeline

There are three main ways for synthetic diamonds to enter the consumer market:

1. Wholesalers
The biggest wholesaler is the company Chatham Created Gems, San-Francisco, managed by Tom and Serena Chatem, who both deal with Russian (from the RF and Byelorussia) and Chinese goods.
Since 1989, the Thailand company Tairus, established by Valter Barshai, has been working with Russian producers of synthetic semiprecious and precious stones. In the field of synthetic diamonds, its partner is a well-known specialist from Novosibirsk, U. N. Palyanov.
Also known as a wholesaler, Alex Gritsenko from the former USSR runs his business in the U.S. (Russian Collored Stones, Lucent Diamonds, Ultimate Created Diamond). The business volumes are unknown. 

2. Jewelers
In 2000, the Gringor Company from St. Petersburg announced publicly the production of an experimental parcel of synthetic diamond jewelry. Production volumes are unknown.
In summer 2007 the U.S. company Pintura Cultured Diamond Corporation announced an output of earrings, rings and pendants with synthetic diamonds under the trademark Gemesis™ Diamonds. Moreover, the American designer of leather fancy goods Taryn Rose announced his intention to create a jewelry collection with synthetic diamonds by summer 2008, which is expected to be sold in Neiman Marcus and Saks chain stores in New York.
There is also implicit data. On June 1-2, 2006, the International Scientific and Practical Seminar “The use of synthetic diamonds in jewelry production and methods of identification” (in Byelorussia State University) was held in Minsk. Specialists from companies selling and using synthetic diamonds in production, and also from jewelry plants and companies from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Czechia took part in the seminar. 

3. “Biological” companies
In 2006, the Russian company New Age Diamonds specializing in gem-quality synthetic diamond production, entered the Japanese market with a new product “Heart-In Baby Diamond”— a lab-grown diamond made from new-born children’s hair.
Heart-In Baby Diamond is the last addition to the line of memorable diamonds, which are custom-made from human or animal hair (alive or dead). Prices range from ,500 for a light-brown diamond weighting 0.2 carats to ,000 for a red-chameleon diamond weighting 0.8 carats.
Brilliant of Soul Ltd. (established in 2005) from St. Petersburg offers the same service.
The British company LifeGem has grown a 0.56 carat diamond from a curl of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s hair and put it up for auction on eBay.

Diamond self-protection

Why have all gemstones already surrendered under the onslaught of their synthetic analogues, but diamonds not?
We came to the following conclusion: a diamond provides for its own protection due to its overall physicochemical properties, in particular, due to a carbon state diagram.
The technology of high temperature processes has reached its natural limits, as all high temperature materials have been already tested. Actually, only ceramic is stable and inert at synthesis temperatures used by the HTHP technique,; however, it is at the technology breaking point to press a fragile “flask” up to 5GPa, to control a temperature gradient in a synthesis cell,  and, at the same time, to watch for a real pressure in an atomic zone of diamond synthesis.
As for carbon radicals layer deposition from middle temperature plasma, there are also difficult technical problems. In particular, as a diamond grows, it is necessary to adjust surface plasma, which is not clear even in theory.   

Conclusions:

1. Modern synthetic diamond production does not pose a threat to popular and elite sectors of the jewelry market, because there is no technology which produces clear (white) diamonds at competitive price.
2. A maximum capability of yellow-brown synthetic diamonds is to take up insignificant niches on the “outskirts” of the world jewelry market, for example, in collections of admirers of “artificial items,” “acid style” adherents, lovers of original ritual services and other minorities.
3. The level of technological development eliminates the possibility of outstanding breakthroughs in diamond synthesis in the near future.
4. The developed reserves of natural diamonds and updating of ore-mining and processing technologies will keep a competitive advantage for natural gem-quality diamonds for a period of 50-100 years.