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GIA Examines Pink Lab-Grown Diamond Made to Look Natural
The 6-carat CVD-grown pink diamond was “deliberately modified” to mimic the appearance of a natural rough diamond, the lab said.
This 6.06-carat pink diamond (left) was fashioned to resemble an octahedron and likely then etched to create a resorbed appearance, GIA said in a recent article. The surface of one facet exhibited etched trigons (right), a feature typically associated with natural rough diamonds. (Photos courtesy of GIA/Photo credits: Sood Oil (Judy) Chia, left, and Kyaw Soe Moe; field of view on the right is 4.79 mm)
New York—The Gemological Institute of America recently examined a pink rough diamond it determined was a lab-grown stone modified to look like a natural rough diamond.
The 6.06-carat pink stone was submitted to GIA’s New York lab for identification.
Its surface displayed etched trigons and rounded faces, features associated with resorbed natural diamond crystals, according to an article in the fall 2026 edition of Gems & Gemology authored by Kyaw Soe Moe, supervisor of analytics, and Wuyi Wang, senior vice president of research and identification at GIA New York.
Initial spectroscopic analysis suggested that the fancy pink color resulted from a multi-step treatment process involving high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) treatment, artificial irradiation, and moderate temperature annealing.
Subsequent testing revealed the diamond was grown using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, fabricated into a natural-looking octahedral morphology, and further treated to produce trigon etch features on one facet “closely mimicking the appearance of a natural rough diamond,” the article states.
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The 6.06-carat pink stone was submitted to GIA’s New York lab for identification.
Its surface displayed etched trigons and rounded faces, features associated with resorbed natural diamond crystals, according to an article in the fall 2026 edition of Gems & Gemology authored by Kyaw Soe Moe, supervisor of analytics, and Wuyi Wang, senior vice president of research and identification at GIA New York.
Initial spectroscopic analysis suggested that the fancy pink color resulted from a multi-step treatment process involving high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) treatment, artificial irradiation, and moderate temperature annealing.
Subsequent testing revealed the diamond was grown using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, fabricated into a natural-looking octahedral morphology, and further treated to produce trigon etch features on one facet “closely mimicking the appearance of a natural rough diamond,” the article states.
In initial testing, infrared absorption spectroscopy indicated that the diamond was nominally type IIa but also contained isolated nitrogen.
Natural type IIa diamonds, considered to be the most chemically pure diamonds, have no measurable nitrogen or boron impurities.
They also typically exhibit irregular crystal morphology, rather than well-formed octahedral crystals, the authors said.
These two factors raised questions for the lab about the stone’s origin and further testing, along with Diamond View imaging, confirmed the stone was a CVD-grown diamond that had been treated to produce its pink color.
“The finding demonstrates an increasingly sophisticated approach to simulating the appearance of natural rough diamonds and underscores the need for comprehensive laboratory analysis when determining diamond origin,” the article states.
“Reliance on surface morphology alone can be misleading, whereas spectroscopic analysis and DiamondView imaging provide definitive evidence for accurately determining a diamond’s origin.”
The article states that this is the first case GIA has documented of a CVD-grown diamond that was “deliberately modified” to produce a natural-looking octahedral crystal morphology.
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