Editor’s Note
This article highlights a significant technological advancement in the fight against conflict diamonds. While international laws exist to ban their trade, verifying a diamond’s true origin has remained a challenge. The work of Polish researchers, as detailed here, offers a promising new method to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the global diamond industry.
International laws prohibit the trade of diamonds from conflict-affected countries, but currently, it is impossible to be certain of the origin of precious stones. A Polish laboratory has found the solution.
Could the diamond in your engagement ring come from a conflict country, like Russia? Not legally, and there is now a technology developed by a European project in Poland that could prevent this from happening illegally in the future.
Barbara Dembowska runs her diamond sales company in the Polish city of Poznań. Her precious stones come only from trusted suppliers in Belgium, France, or Italy, but in reality, even their certificates cannot guarantee their origin one hundred percent. The new technologies developed by Nanores, a laboratory in Wroclaw, are revolutionizing this situation.
Blood diamonds, also called conflict diamonds or dirty diamonds, are stones extracted in conflict zones and sold to finance armed conflicts, human rights violations, and illicit activities.
To combat the trade of conflict diamonds, the Kimberley Process, a certification system that imposes strict requirements for diamond traceability, ensuring that traded diamonds come from legal and sustainable sources, was launched internationally in 2000. Member countries ensure, among other things, that imported diamonds do not come from conflict countries. In recent years, the European Union has added Russia to the list of prohibited countries.
Despite progress, the system has weaknesses. There are still ways to circumvent it and a lack of control in some regions, which allows blood diamonds to enter the market.
The diamond traceability technology developed by Nanores is called Diamond ID.
Paweł Modrzyński, Cofounder, Nanores
The project, which cost Nanores over 2.2 million euros, was funded to the tune of nearly 1.75 million euros by the European cohesion policy. It was tested on surfaces of 500×500 micrometers. A micrometer is one-millionth of a meter.
But why is this technology needed? What is the current situation and how is this project innovative?
The goal is to be able to engrave the mark inside the diamond at the microscopic level from the moment of extraction. This prevents the marking from being removed, since it is not on the surface and is not visible, and guarantees the traceability of the stone from its origin to the final consumer.
Diamond ID is associated with another technology, the “digital twin.” This means a digital copy of the diamond’s marking will be stored in a database. This is what you will find on your diamond in a few years, once the technology has been patented and brought to market. A diamond guaranteed 100% ethical.