Lab created diamonds are one of this decades hot new technologies, with good reason! The ability of scientists and technicians to use a machine and create something rare and valuable that was previously only found in nature harks back to the many attempts at alchemy through the ages.

Although the ability to make good quality, cost effective lab diamonds is relatively new, companies have been successfully producing diamonds in te lab for decades. In fact, GE used a massive press with hundreds of tons of pressure to crush carbon as long ago as the 1950s. This process was able to create diamonds in a size useful for jewelry, but the cost of the energy involved was so high the the diamonds actually cost more than the real thing!

This was the spiritual predecessor of the High Pressure High Temperature method of making diamonds, in which a chamber  was subject to high pressure and temperature and graphite (carbon) gas was injected, forming diamonds on seed crystals. This process has subsequently been replaced by the much more popular, and cheaper, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) Process.

In the CVD process, carbon vapor is introduced into an environment at the right conditions to alow it to recrystallise on a 'seed' crystal, which is a small low grade diamond. These machines take several days to produce a diamond but can do so quite cheaply - several carats for less than 100 dollars.

Some of the benefits of created diamonds is that they can be made in a huge range of colors, for the same or less cost than a white diamond. Natural colored diamonds can command huge price tags, but the CVD process tends to make yellower diamonds by default - in fact they must be given anothre treatment to whiten them if this is desired.

Created diamonds also have the benefit that they have not been mined, and have not caused massive ecological damage. They have also not required the exploitation of residents of third world countries - which is a hidden part of the price of a natural diamond.