You might have gone to buy jewellery and at the jewellery store and they told you that one is engineered and the other is mined. That could have been the first time you heard about the engineered diamond. And because you were told engineering is a nice career than mining, you went for engineered diamond not only because it was cheaper, but you thought they confused the two. You got it wrong!

Engineered diamond is man-made and grown in a laboratory. The chemical used is mixed in similar proportions as mined diamond, and it is identical to mined diamond. Most people will not notice the difference. They share the same diamond crystal lattice structure as the diamond that is mined. To produce engineered diamond, there are two ways of going about it. One is called high-pressure – high temperature and the other is through use of chemical vapor deposition. With the high-pressure high-temperature diamond, engineers will first make a diamond soup and make use of heat and pressure to create a single diamond crystal that is sold as engineered diamond. Chemical vapor method is where a seed of diamond crystal is grown into diamond later in a chamber by use of chemicals.

With Mined diamond, the miners will use specialized machinery. In Canada, for example, they mine diamond in tundra’s using complicated machinery. In Africa, diamond is mined using simple tools and others will use the complicated machinery too. The difference in cost between engineered diamond and mined diamond is in the range of 20% to 40%, depending on the quality of the engineered diamond. Engineered diamond is used in creating engagement rings.

Advantages of Engineered Diamond

It is cheaper than mined diamond. The difference in pricing is 20 to 40 percent.
It is considered more ethical than mined diamond. There are people who view mining as a process that depletes resources from the earth and they, therefore, prefer buying engineered Diamond.
Engineered Diamond is said to be unique compared to the mined diamond.
You have the option of selecting larger sizes and shapes are customizable and therefore they offer more flexibility.
They come in different colors and therefore more attractive to the human eye.
You get same value at lower cost. The two are identical and therefore there is no difference going for engineered diamond.
The engineered diamond is from a conflict free environment as compared to mined diamond that comes from areas prone to conflicts over mining fields.

Disadvantages of Engineered Diamond

Engineered diamond has limited supply due to high demand.
Very few companies sell engineered diamond and this is in relation to the fact that its supply is lower than demand.
Engineered diamond can be bought in selected merchant shops.

Conclusion

Engineered diamond has some inclusions in it and sometimes it might show some carbon inclusions.