#Microwave diamonds':'Girl's new best friend The 2. 62 carat diamond Calvin Mills bought his fiancee in November is a stunner. Pear-shaped and canary-yellow, the gem cost $22, 000-a bargain. Mills, the chief executive officer of CMC Technology Consulting in Baton rouge, La. says he could have spent tens of thousands more on a comparably sized diamond mined out of the earth, but his came from a lab ."I got more diamond for less money, "says the former Southern University football player. who proposed last year at halftime during one of his alma mater's games at the Superdome in New orleans . While man-made gems make up just a fraction of the $80 billion global diamond market, demand is increasing as buyers look for cheaper stones that are cheaper-and free of ethical taint. Human-rights groups, with help from Hollywood have popularized the term"blood diamonds"to call attention to the role diamond mining has played in fuelling conflicts in Africa. Unlike imitation diamonds such as cubic zirconia, stones that are grown"(the nascent industry's preferred term) in labs have the same physical characteristics and chemical makeup as the real thing. They're made from a carbon seed placed in a microwave chamber with methane or another carbon-containing gas and superheated into a glowing plasma ball. That creates particles that crystallize into diamonds, a process that can take 10 weeks. The technology has progressed to the point that experts need a machine to tell synthesized gems apart from those extracted from mines or rivers. North american consumers from 18 to 35 who say they prefer natural and untreated diamonds: 45%Retailers, including Wal-mart Stores and Warren Buffett's Helzberg Diamonds are beginning to stock the artificial gems.""To a modern consumer, if they get a diamond from above the ground or in the ground, do they really care?""asks Chaim Even-Zohar, a principal at Tacy, an industry consulting firm in Ramat Gan, Israel. In a survey by Gemdax, an Antwerp-based consultant, only 45%of North american consumers from 18 to 35 said they prefer natural diamonds.""Some substitution for natural diamonds is inevitable, "says Anish Aggarwal, a partner at the firm, which wouldn't disclose who paid for the study. Gemdax says more research is needed to better gauge consumer attitudes. The companies that dominate the market for natural gems, including Russia's Alrosa and De beers, a unit of London-based Anglo American, don't see it the upstarts as much of a threat, because"it's such a small fraction"of the market, says Neil Koppel, the CEO of Renaissance Diamonds. His company, in Boca raton, Fla. is supplying Helzberg stores in 10 US cities. Last year only about 3, 60,000 carats of man-made diamonds were produced, compared with 146 million carats of natural gems mined in 2013, estimates researcher Frost & Sullivan. The Supply of lab-grown stones will probably jump to 2 million carats in 2018 and 20 million by 2026.""The value of a diamond is linked inextricably to the inspirational and unique narrative that lies behind each one, from its formation to its history to its emotional significance, which lab-grown diamonds simply don't have said, "the company. in a statement. In July, mining companies won a major marketing victory when the International organization for Standardization ruled that man-made gems must be called synthetic, lab-grown, or lab-created-not real, cultivated, or cultured d
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