This discovery could have big implications.
HONG KONG — Multiple single-cut diamonds, sized from a quarter-point to a half-point (0.0025 to 0.005 carats), have been found to be synthetic, according to Hong Kong-based Diamond Services.
The find “greatly expand[s] the range of goods that can be considered at risk of improper and deceptive disclosure,” the company said in a press release.
Barely visible on the electronic scale, these tiny single-cut diamonds were discovered by Diamond Services to be laboratory grown.
The jewelry was originally submitted to Diamond Services’ laboratory in New York. Because of their size, the owner agreed that 11 of them — set in eight rings and ranging from 0.0025 to 0.005 carats — could be removed and sent for full analysis at Diamond the company’s facility in Hong Kong. There they were examined again using the firm’s DiamaTest system, which showed that they were synthetic. The findings were confirmed via the DiamondView system of De Beers’ International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research and Diamond Services’ Mini Raman Spectrometer.
Usually restricted to smaller-sized stones, single-cut diamonds typically have 17 or 18 facets, and some as few as 16, compared with the standard brilliant round cuts, which are made up of the 57 or 58 facets. Most round stones are first polished as single cuts, and then the additional facets are added.
“But when small stones are concerned, they are left as single cuts,” the release notes.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a synthetic single-cut stone has been detected mounted in jewelry, and it is a credit to our Diamond Services procedures and set of equipment,” said Jospeh Kuzi, Diamond Services founder and managing director. “What this means is that almost no diamond can be taken at face value.”
The source of the single-cut synthetics is not immediately apparent, but Kuzi noted that the growing availability of CVD man-made diamonds may prove to be a factor.
“CVD is being widely in areas outside the diamond industry, and now includes diamond wafers being gown in laboratories for use in the electronics industry,” he said. “It could be that waste from these labs and factories ends up being processed as very small single-cut diamonds for jewelry.”