About Lab-Grown Diamonds

A lab-grown diamond is a diamond raised in a laboratory that recreates the environment in which natural diamonds are born beneath the earth.

Under conditions of high heat and high pressure, carbon slowly crystallizes, a process nearly identical to nature's own. Its brilliance, its structure, and its hardness are no different from those of a natural diamond.

At ANNA DIAMOND, while honoring the workings of nature, we choose this diamond as a material kinder to both the environment and to people.

Natural diamonds, born hundreds of meters underground over billions of years. That romance is, indeed, beautiful.

But what if the same brilliance could be had without digging into the earth any further?

The lab-grown diamonds we work with are not mere substitutes. They are another kind of "real thing," born of technology and care.

This is an age in which the act of choosing carries an intention toward the future.

A natural diamond is a stone born deep in the mantle, about 160km below the surface, where carbon crystallized under intense heat and pressure. After resting underground for hundreds of millions of years, it was carried swiftly to the surface by volcanic activity. Thanks to that speed, it is said to have arrived intact and beautiful, without melting.

There are three main ways diamonds are mined.

Open-pit mining:
A method that uses heavy machinery to dig out a vast pit.

Alluvial mining:
A method of recovering diamonds deposited in riverbeds and banks.

Marine mining:
A method of drawing up seabed sediment to search for diamonds.

Each of these methods, however, can harm the environment. Some mined diamonds are also known as conflict diamonds, or blood diamonds.

These are diamonds used to finance conflict in war-torn regions. The international Kimberley Process has reduced their number, yet the reality is that it remains difficult to guarantee a mined diamond is entirely free of any link to conflict or environmental harm.

A lab-grown diamond can be created through one of two methods, High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) or Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). Both begin with a diamond seed, a single-crystal diamond as thin as a strand of hair, from which the diamond is nurtured over several weeks.

High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT):
A method that recreates conditions modeled on the earth's mantle. In this process, temperatures of 5000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 2760 degrees Celsius) and immense pressure are applied, and with the help of a metal catalyst, pure carbon crystallizes onto the diamond seed. Interestingly, HPHT technology is also used to enhance the brilliance of natural diamonds.

Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD):
A method that grows a diamond using gas, much like 3D printing. Hydrogen and methane gas are turned into plasma at high temperature, and within it, fragments of carbon are layered onto the diamond seed little by little until they crystallize.

The finished diamond is carefully cut and polished by skilled technicians and high-tech lasers. The result is a diamond identical to a natural one in every physical, chemical, and visual property.