Apollo Diamond, a start-up company founded by a former Bell Labs scientist in his garage, has succeeded in making big, flawless diamonds for jewelry and technical applications.
Linares built machines in his garage, superheating carbon in suburban Boston while his neighbors went about their lives. He got the CVD process to work, at first making tiny diamond chips. He formed Apollo and started down the path to industrial diamonds. Then Linares inadvertently left a diamond piece in a beaker of acid over a weekend. The acid cleaned up excess carbon — essentially coal — that had stayed on the diamond.
"When I came in Monday, I couldn't see the (stone) in the beaker," Linares says. The diamond was colorless and pure. "That's when I realized we could do gemstones."