Silicon Valley Startup Developing Lab-Made Diamonds
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS News) -- At one Silicon Valley startup, engineers are doing in weeks what takes nature millions of years.
They're making diamonds.
"Just like out of mine, our growth chambers produce a rough diamond," said Jeremy Scholz, Chief Technology Officer of the Diamond Foundry. "For us, in just a few weeks, we produce a one-carat stone with plasma and with chemistry. We're accelerating the very same processes that happen in the earth."
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To protect their secrets from the competition, the Diamond Foundry provided only glimpses of the machines that -- at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit -- rearrange carbon atoms into precious gems.
Chief Quality Officer John King of the Gemological Institute of America - who grades diamonds - said there is little difference between those mined from the earth and those grown in a machine.