What are memorial diamonds?
These are personalized lab-grown diamonds. We take a carbon source, such as ashes or hair, and use it to make a unique gem, which will forever remind you of your loved ones.
How do we grow the diamonds using cremation ashes?
Let’s get more technical for a moment.
|
Ashes contain different quantities of carbon depending on the temperature of the cremation. |
 |
| That is why we test the material. We begin the process by grinding the ashes, then remove the oxygen and hydrogen from them at low temperature. |
 |
| Multi-step chemical treatments with a mix of mineral acids allows to separate and discard the ferric salts, calcium and other inclusions. |  |
| Removing the silicon compounds is an excruciatingly long and difficult process. |  |
| We need to use chemicals with very high purity, medical distilled water, and to strictly observe the technological process in order to obtain amorphous carbon with purity over 98.5%. |  |
| Heat treatment at over 2700°C in the presence of inert gas transforms its structure into layered graphite with purity over 99.9%. This process is called ‘graphitization’. |  |
| The quality of the purified graphite is verified via various instrumental methods. |  |
| Grinding of the particles to only a few microns ensures the good quality of their pressing into a tablet. Our partners from a leading European laboratory have sufficient HPHT BARS machines for laboratory diamond synthesis. |  |
| When they receive the personalized graphite, they add it to the growth cell. The crystallization process begins when the pressure and temperature reach certain predefined values. The pressure needs to be above 50,000 bars, and the temperature – above 1400°С for the process to take place. A small diamond seed attracts the carbon from the iron-nickel alloy over a period of a few weeks. |  |
After the process is complete, we get a rough crude diamond with an octahedral shape. Its colour is usually yellow because of the nitrogen atoms in the crystal. Removing the nitrogen allows for the boron atoms to color the diamond in different shades of blue. It takes a lot of time and effort to produce a colorless diamond. Pink diamond production is even more labor-intensive and time-consuming, it can take up to 11 months.
After cleaning the rough diamond, it is cut and polished. This is a process that requires a lot of time and work. The result is a diamond in the shape of a brilliant, heart, oval, square, and so on.
We suggests a round shape with 57 or 58 facets - that provides the best reflection of light.
