how to grow your own diamonds

I became interested in this and researched it awhile back.

The CVD (chemical vapor deposition) method is the most interesting.
Basically you take a microwave and run some quartz tubing into it. Attached to the tubing you have metered oxygen, hydrogen, and methane. You put a tiny chip of real diamond into the tubing inside the microwave. The microwaves, hydrogen, and oxygen react to form a small plasma ball around the diamond chip. As the methane goes into the plasma it is broke down to carbon and slowly layers more diamond onto the chip, growing it. My past research showed that growing about one carat in 24 hours was the norm. You have to have control of the microwave power, the pressure, and the gas flows to not end up with a poop brown diamond.

I ran across plans for a home made plasma reactor out of a house hold microwave long ago. I guess this process had to start some where. But in the plans they had a dummy load. Something to absorb the unused microwave energy and also allow it to not spark if metal is in it. I'm not sure why that was needed.

These diamonds are the real thing, usually with less imperfections than the real thing. And can only be told apart by using an expensive spectral analysis machine (which Debeers bought a lot of).

The precision metering valves for the gases are fairly expensive. But I sure would like to try it some day.

wiki
en.wikipedia.org...
pictures of commercial reactors
www.mpa.fr...

Can't get the video to embed, short video
www.youtube.com...

reply to post by yellowsnow


Here ya go...

www.nu.nl...

Today in the news on dutch news site (use google chrome site translate).

They say that the world wide diamond trade is under threat.
At an inpection of 600 diamonds they discovered they where synthetic fabricated and only by experts they can be seen as ''fake''. And even for experts it's a really really hard job.

The Belgium diamond industry says; it's destroying their business.

In grad school I started working on a project to determine growth conditions for diamonds, nanotubes, bucky balls, and graphene using an oxy-acetylene torch and different 'substrates' under different atmospheric conditions. I didn't get very far before switching to a different project, but it looked like it was going to be a cheap way to grow industrial diamonds (~tens - hundreds of microns in size). We were using small Cu rods and a nitrogen atmosphere (STP) and got a mix of diamond, amorphous carbon, and what looked like a few bucky balls/nanotubes. The project was dropped at that point since we got funding for what ended up being my dissertation project, but I'm sure someone has published related information.

a reply to: yellowsnow

Hi yellowsnow,
Can you reveal a little more about your research ? I liked to find more information

All you need is some peanut butter and a microwave and bling bling! You can get some diamonds!

www.sciencealert.com...
The process works by placing a tiny fragment of diamond (called a carbon seed) into a microwave along with varying amounts of a carbon-heavy gas - methane is most commonly used. The gas mixture is heated to very high temperatures in the microwave to produce a plasma ball, and inside this, the gas breaks down and the carbon atoms crystallise and accumulate on the diamond seed, causing it to grow.

a reply to: yellowsnow

What a hoot if this process is easy and open for a lot of people/firms to do. Makes Liz Taylor's diamond etc look unexc exceptional now.

How soon can we manufacture gold? I would love to see the repercussions on some people over that one - best day for the world that would be.

originally posted by: Shiloh7
a reply to: yellowsnow

What a hoot if this process is easy and open for a lot of people/firms to do. Makes Liz Taylor's diamond etc look unexc exceptional now.

How soon can we manufacture gold? I would love to see the repercussions on some people over that one - best day for the world that would be.

Just need some bacteria my friend! Blam you can make gold, people are doing it, even a few artists!

originally posted by: Shiloh7
a reply to: yellowsnow

What a hoot if this process is easy and open for a lot of people/firms to do. Makes Liz Taylor's diamond etc look unexc exceptional now.

How soon can we manufacture gold? I would love to see the repercussions on some people over that one - best day for the world that would be.

We can in fact already manufacture gold. Unfortunately the process is so expensive it is cheaper to just buy the gold.

We just need to get them to grow advanced structures like diamond nanotubes!

Interesting topic. One can also make oil and coal in days and weeks.