Beyond Jewelry: The Many Faces of Diamonds
We’re in the business of creating gemstone-quality diamonds for jewelry, but there are a lot of things diamonds are used for beyond jewels! Lab-grown diamonds are an important part of many industrial and scientific applications.
Lab-grown gemstones weren’t always so high in quality. In fact, the first lab-grown diamonds were far too small and dull to be of any use in jewelry at all. For a long time, the available technology could only produce diamonds useful for industrial purposes. Today, about 98% of industrial-grade diamonds are lab-grown. Some 70% of mined diamonds are not suitable for jewelry. These not-suitable-for-jewelry diamonds, known as “bort” (which we mention only so we can reference The Simpsons), are typically used for polishing the other 30% of mined diamonds.
“We need more Bort license plates in the gift shop. I repeat, we are sold out of Bort license plates”
Lab-grown diamonds make up such a large share of industrial-grade diamonds, in part, because nobody really mines diamonds just for industrial purposes. The only way the business can be profitable is by mining and selling gemstone-quality crystals. The same is not the case in the lab-grown sector, which can profitably produce both sparkling, clear gemstones and the kind of material used in industry. We prefer the sparkling kind, but we also recognize the importance of the harder-working sort. So let’s take a look at the many faces of diamonds.
Abrasives
Being the hardest natural substance on earth, it makes sense that diamonds are used in many industries. One of the main uses for diamonds is as an abrasive. Diamond is actually more cost-effective for cutting, polishing, and grinding than cheaper materials because it cuts faster and lasts longer.
One common use of diamond abrasive is in saw blades. But if you’re picturing a blade cut from a single massive diamond, that’s unfortunately not quite how it works. And as cool as that would be, it wouldn’t be feasible either. Despite being the hardest natural substance on earth, diamonds are rather brittle, and if an object struck even the smallest flaw or fracture in the diamond blade, the whole thing would crack. So what exactly are diamond saw blades?
If you’ve ever had to cut concrete, brick, or tile, you probably know the answer. When you need to cut something really hard, why not use the hardest natural substance on earth? (“Hardest natural substance on earth” count = 3.) If you’ve seen one of these blades, you know that they don’t cut with a sharp edge. The flat diamond-coated circumference actually grinds down the material through friction.
Diamond-coated saw blades use lab-grown diamonds so that the diamonds can be grown to exacting specifications. Diamond growers can grow crystals suitable for different speeds and for cutting different materials.
Heat Sinks
Diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of any material. But while materials with thermal conductivity are often electrical conductors, diamond is an insulator. As a result, it makes an effective heat sink for lasers and high-power diodes and transistors.
Semiconductors
Wait, didn’t we just say diamonds were insulators? Lab-grown diamonds can be used as electrical conductors because conductive materials such as boron can be added during the growth process. The demand for semiconductors is always rising, and lab-grown diamonds being able to serve this function would add a bit of sustainability to an industry reliant on rare precious metals.
Laser Optics
We look up at the night sky and wax poetic, seeing in the stars a string of diamonds, but there are also actual diamonds in space. Just last year, NASA launched a probe called Lucy carrying an infrared spectrometer whose beamsplitter is made of lab-grown diamonds. A beamsplitter is an optical device that splits light into separate beams. Diamond’s high refractive index makes it the perfect material for this application.
At this point, you probably have some questions. No, not about the science of Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, but about the probe’s name. Is it called Lucy because it’s in the sky…with diamonds? That’s far too straightforward. The actual reason is a little more convoluted than that. The probe is named for the fossilized human ancestor paleontologists called Lucy, which itself was named after the Beatles song, and also because the Trojans, small asteroids that share an orbital path with Jupiter, have a great scientific value, like diamonds in the sky. Like we said, convoluted. We like our explanation better.
These are just a few of the many industrial applications of diamonds. Of course, Primo doesn’t sell industrial lab-grown diamonds. We only sell big, beautiful, brilliantly-cut-and-polished gem quality diamonds. But the same properties that make diamonds uniquely beautiful also make them uniquely suited to a number of specialized tasks in construction, industry, and scientific research.