Image credit: New Diamond Technology
New Diamond Technology based in St. Petersburg has set another world record in growing exclusively large single-crystal diamonds, Type Ib (containing nitrogen) producing a diamond weighing 129.47 carats and sized 29.5x29,5x21 mm in early October 2020 using the HPHT method. Currently, this diamond is being prepared for certification by the GIA.
It took 400 hours to grow the stone, and the company reached a growth speed of 65 mg/h. The impressive size of this lab-grown diamond gives reason to assume that in the near future (one or two years) the world will see a sharp expansion of the market trading in large-size lab-grown polished diamonds, as well as an increase in the research and development works pursuing the creation of instruments and devices based on diamond electronics and optics due to a sharp decrease in the cost of lab-grown large-size rough. This follows from the fact that a huge park of press equipment of the Chinese diamond industry, which is engaged in growing single-crystal diamonds by the HPHT method using the same equipment as that of New Diamond Technology, will create preconditions for ramping up the production of CVD-diamonds of larger size and quality supplying cheap high-quality HPHT matrices of large sizes (up to 1 inch) for growing such stones.
New Diamond Technology's previous record set in 2018 was a lab-grown diamond weighing 103.5 carats.
In the recent past, a rough diamond weighing 55.94 carats produced by New Diamond Technology while developing the technique for growing large single-crystal diamonds was used to make a 20.22 carat polished diamond, so far unsurpassed in terms of size and quality among lab-grown diamonds.
Image credit: New Diamond Technology
Galina Semyonova for Rough&Polished
