Natural vs Lab-grown vs Simulants

	Natural Diamond	Laboratory Made Diamond	Moissanite	Cubic Zirconia
Origin	Earth-mined	Laboratory	Laboratory	Laboratory
Hardness	10 The hardest mineral	10 The hardest mineral	9.25	8.5 Prone to Scratching
Price per carat (HKD)	$40000 up	$5000 up	$100 up	$10 up
Refractive Index (The higher the refractive index, the greater the sparkle)	2.42	2.42	2.65-2.69	2.15
Chemical Symbol	Carbon	Carbon	Silicon carbide	Zirconium dioxide
Certificate (GIA/IGI)	✓	✓	⨯	⨯

💎Lab-grown diamonds and Natural diamonds💎

Lab-grown diamonds are real diamonds. They have the same general appearance, chemical composition, colour, hardness and refractive index with earth-mined diamonds. Lab-grown diamonds are indistinguishable from natural diamonds, even inspected by professionals.

Main advantages of Lab-grown Diamonds:

• Reduce the environmental impact of diamond mining, creating a more environmental friendly diamond.
• No more conflict diamonds with more ethical production.
• Cost-effective, selling price is around 1/10 of natural diamonds.

💎 Diamond Simulants and Natural diamonds💎

Diamond simulants are generally low-cost mass-produced stones (not even regarded as semi-precious stones). The two may look similar at the first glance for layman, but diamond simulants can be identified by professionals.

The chemical and physical properties of simulants are completely different from diamonds and they do not have the optical properties of diamonds. Also, they will show signs of wear and tarnish from daily wear with the reason that they have lower hardness comparing to diamonds.