diamond synthesis history

The fact that diamond is composed out of almost pure carbon was discovered in the 18th century. It was not until the first discovery of diamonds in modern times, that our understanding began to develop about the formation history of a diamond. It requires extreme conditions - high pressures and high temperature to form a diamond crystal.

Because these extreme conditions are very hard to reproduce in a laboratory, it wasn't until the 20th century that the first synthetic diamond was produced. Indeed, it was not until the 1950s before diamonds could be made with an machine in a reproducible manner.

On February 16, 1953 in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Allmana Avensak Elektriska Aktiebolaget (A.S.E.A), a few small diamond crystals were produced. The HPHT device was a bulky split sphere apparatus designed by Baltzar von Platen and Anders Kämpe. The discovery though was kept secret at the time. The first successful synthesis of diamond in the US was produced on December 16, 1954, by H.Tracy Hall at General Electric, using a "belt" apparatus. Other companies such as De Beers, Sumitomo in Japan, Iljin in Korea and Russian scientists also developed techniques (HPHT devices - High Pressure High Temperature) to produce synthically grown diamonds but the cost and time associated with the procedure far outweighed any economical advantage the companies would obtain by marketing the stones at the time.


The HPHT approach remained the most successful and widely used method until in 2004, U.S. based Apollo Diamonds announced a breakthrough in another synthesis method capable of growing commercial mono-crystalline diamonds through CVD technology (Chemical Vapor Deposition).