How high is the technical threshold for investing in lab diamonds?

Lab diamonds are just as real as white diamond. Since the 1950s, lab grown diamond have been used as super materials for a variety of industrial applications, including semiconductors and renewable energy. Over time, technology has advanced and they have now reached gem quality levels and are now being used in jewellery.

Let's start with lab diamonds.

Nowadays there is absolutely no difference between lab and mined diamonds. Lab diamonds have exactly the same colour and hardness as natural diamonds, and each diamond is unique, almost like a mined diamond.

The blood diamond problem that mining can cause, as well as the environmental hazards it causes, is part of the reason for the growing demand for lab grown diamonds. According to the International Growing Diamond Association (IGDA), the carbon emissions from the diamond mining process are 1.5 billion times greater than those in the laboratory, with approximately 57,000 grams of carbon emissions per carat in lab grown diamonds compared to just 0.028 grams per carat.

There are currently two methods of artificially growing diamonds worldwide: high temperature and pressure (HTHP) and chemical vapour deposition (CVD). These two methods of diamond production are different, but both produce the same diamonds, known as Lab Grown Diamonds. In general, the colour grade of the diamonds produced by the high temperature and pressure method is superior, while the clarity of the diamonds produced by the chemical vapour deposition method is superior. These are the two types of lab diamonds as opposed to each other.

 Both man made diamonds and diamonds grown naturally in the ground are classified as low grade or high grade; there are carat diamond with excellent clarity and diamonds with particularly large inclusions; and there are diamonds with varying grain sizes, all of which are classified using the same 4C scale.

Some people often ask: "It is surprising that diamonds can be cultivated artificially, surely the clarity and colour grade of lab diamonds are first class and can definitely beat the uncontrollable nature of natural diamonds". Others often ask: "If it is synthetic, it must be super cheap!--These are all completely wrong!

 Firstly, the cost of investing in lab diamonds is very high, and secondly, the cost of producing lab diamonds is not cheap either. There are many teams in China that have invested tens of millions of RMB in research and development for several years, but now it is still a mess. The cost of a diamond production machine is calculated in millions, and the cost of a fashion diamond laboratory that meets the requirements for cultivating gemstones would be calculated in millions.

And a single machine can only produce a few or a dozen carats of diamonds a week. And this is not without a lot of small, flawed stones. Even if we could master the technology of producing lab diamonds, the bottleneck in production technology is that only a few percent of them are gem-quality, and there are only a few manufacturers in the world who can produce high-grade, stable-colour lab diamonds, and this number is only a few, single-digit calculations.

Laboratory diamonds, a product of high-tech development, require a high technical threshold. High-tech production is unlikely to be at a cabbage price, but the price will indeed be a little cheaper than natural diamonds. Artificially grown diamonds are more environmentally friendly, more labour efficient and the biggest expense is the cost of production. And it won't be like a natural diamond, where all its costs are mining costs, labour costs and advertising costs!

Lab diamonds have exactly the same composition as natural diamonds, they are both crystals of carbon. The hardness, crystallinity, refractive index, etc. are all exactly the same! The main difference between them is that the output is different, one is dug out of the ground and the other is produced using high-tech laboratories. So you can buy them according to your budget needs, after all, lab diamonds are real diamonds, not moissanite, high carbon diamonds, zircon and other fake diamonds, they such only have the same appearance, the inside is completely different.