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Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

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Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#261

Post by namibj »

nsteel wrote: post #215
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!

Why are they not more popular as a material for heatsinks? Especially with those that like decorating the inside of the PC with fairy lights.

Oh they are. But heat pipes/vapor chambers have them beat. So they are only used where electrical insulation (pure diamond sheet) or mechanical strength (cheap diamond grains sorted into a densely packed single layer of diamonds embedded into a copper matrix; this fits nicely for silver sinter bonding dies to due to the low thermal expansion of diamond) is needed from the heatsink.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#262

Post by 404mm »

chmod775 wrote: post #256
dirtdobber wrote: post #248

I don't see demand for natural diamonds going anywhere. There's a reason that Rolex, Cartier, and other luxury brands don't use cheap, synthetic diamonds in their products. I know a jeweler personally that sells synthetic and natural diamonds. He can spot the difference from a mile away between a synthetic and a natural diamond (synthetics look extremely pure and have no flaws). His wealthy clients buy natural diamon…

> I don't see demand for real diamonds going anywhere. Calling one "real" and not the other is the wrong. Synthetic diamonds aren't an imitation. The distinction is "natural" and "synthetic". > Not because it's a "better investment" but because they can. From my experience it's to show off (that's the whole point of jewelry) and they'll be happy to tell you about their real diamond anytime the conversations ventures…

Is it not possible to introduce impurities or flaws to synthetic diamonds, making them virtually indistinguishable?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#263

Post by divbzero »

biomcgary wrote: post #183
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!

Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.

How about diamond smartphone screens? Beats Gorilla Glass or sapphire.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#264

Post by markus_zhang »

dirtdobber wrote: post #253
markus_zhang wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 100% sure but it shouldn't be too expensive too "add" a few flaws if customers wish...

Perhaps. But I see one of two things happening regardless: (1) the market maintains a distinction between real and synthetic or (2) the market doesn't, and diamonds become irrelevant as a luxury item. If case 2 happens, it just means that diamonds get replaced with something else like gold, and gold luxury items become much more expensive. In any case, your future wife probably doesn't really want that massive synthe…

Yeah that's true. Unfortunately HN folks in general are not in position to exploit it.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#265

Post by bambax »

Joker_vD wrote: post #49
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #11

Over the past 10 years, there has been an explosion in cheap lab diamond and moissanite producers in China and India. 10 years ago, it was hard to find quality lab diamonds at a reasonable price, and moissanite was still reasonably expensive at $400-600/ct. Today, given cutthroat competition and "race to the bottom" pricing strategies, lab diamonds are ubiquitous, extremely high quality, and cheap. Less than $200/ct…

> I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Artificial diamonds, you mean. The natural ones will keep their price, just as "hand-crafted" goods did (and, I suspect, as "human-produced" content in the future will); it's a matter of status and signalling that you can afford to buy an inferior, more expensive product.

High-end watches are worse at telling the time than electronic watches, but they are visibly different and identifiable, so they can broadcast status.

Diamonds made by man or nature are now indistinguishable, except to highly trained experts (and even then, not always), so it's unclear why anyone would prefer the expensive kind.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#266

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jamiek88 wrote: post #259
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both me mum and grandmum were British.

We don’t say grandmum btw! But then you don’t say grandmom either and it’s just occurred to me that you were probably joking. Sigh.

It was a joke.

Here’s me mum: https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#267

Post by brandonmenc »

BrentOzar wrote: post #117
indoordin0saur wrote: post #27

I'm planning on buying an engagement ring very soon and my own plan (as someone who has never done this before!) is to get a good lab grown diamond but spend more money on the metal in the ring. You can make a gem stone in a lab but until we become a Kardashev II civilization we won't be making any sufficient quantity of gold in a lab. If I buy a good loose lab grown diamond will I be able to find someone who will fi…

> If I buy a good loose lab grown diamond will I be able to find someone who will fit it into a high quality gold ring? Yes, and even better, don't design the ring by yourself. Get a nice jewelry box for the diamond, use it for the proposal, and when you open the box, say: "Our relationship is something we're going to build together. I want your opinion on everything for the rest of my life, because you're going to b…

This is... not good advice.

You're supposed to know what kind of ring your soon-to-be fiancé wants ahead of time.

And they're going to want to be able to put it on their finger right away.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#268

Post by dirtdobber »

chmod775 wrote: post #256
dirtdobber wrote: post #248

I don't see demand for natural diamonds going anywhere. There's a reason that Rolex, Cartier, and other luxury brands don't use cheap, synthetic diamonds in their products. I know a jeweler personally that sells synthetic and natural diamonds. He can spot the difference from a mile away between a synthetic and a natural diamond (synthetics look extremely pure and have no flaws). His wealthy clients buy natural diamon…

> I don't see demand for real diamonds going anywhere. Calling one "real" and not the other is the wrong. Synthetic diamonds aren't an imitation. The distinction is "natural" and "synthetic". > Not because it's a "better investment" but because they can. From my experience it's to show off (that's the whole point of jewelry) and they'll be happy to tell you about their real diamond anytime the conversations ventures…

I use "real" and "natural" interchangeably in this context, but sure if we want to be pedantic I'll use natural instead.

Regardless, I view natural diamonds as having "real" value in the luxury space and synthetics as... Not.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#269

Post by jamiek88 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #266
jamiek88 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t say grandmum btw! But then you don’t say grandmom either and it’s just occurred to me that you were probably joking. Sigh.

It was a joke. Here’s me mum: https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm

Where was she from?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#270

Post by namibj »

trhway wrote: post #192
Animats wrote: post #105

That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price. De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applicat…

>diamond windows for lasers 10cm across sounds like may be soon we'll see diamond wafers for the chips (especially as the price of processed wafer from a fab increases, the cost of the source wafer itself is becoming less important) Add to that X-ray lithography, and the Moore's Law will continue for quite a while.

AFAIK you can still only buy diamond diodes outside of secret military stuff, and even those are not at all accessible.

Sadly GaN suffers from horrible p-channels (they use resistor/nmos logic as the non-differential logic family for GaN ICs), and SiC from kinda sorta delaminating gate oxide (JFETs are fine though, and vertical ones are very nicely behaved, including a lot of resilience like avalanche resistance (though actual (non-capacitive) current flow through the gate junction has to be limited to prevent damage)).

N-type diamond is just difficult, along with diamond itself at a purity approximating "intrinsic"/"none" levels of doping. The issue is that you have to continually etch graphitic carbon during the CVD process, requiring aggressive chemistry.

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