India will soon be self-reliant in lab-grown diamonds for jewellery making and industrial purposes

According to a report in Businessline, InCent-LGD will produce good-quality, 2 square cm single crystal diamond seeds/wafers in the coming months, which are otherwise imported mainly from China. The project is to make India number one in producing diamonds. Diamonds in jewellery are just a small part of the big story. It is their use as a next-generation semiconducting and quantum material that holds more value.

According to Shri. MS Ramachandra Rao, Professor, Department of Physics, IIT-Madras and Head, InCent-LGD, diamonds are a versatile ‘ultra-wide bandgap materials’ that can be integrated with, and complemented along with other semiconducting materials like Gallium Nitride and Silicon Carbide for many electronic applications. The extreme hardness of diamonds makes them useful in various coating technologies to improve the life of cutting tools.