Laboratory grown diamonds are physically identical to natural diamonds in almost every way, except that they are created in a laboratory using state of the art technology and are therefore on average cheaper and more sustainable than mined diamonds. They consist of the same molecular structure as mined diamonds, which means that the physical and optical properties do not change compared to their natural counterparts, as conditions in a mine are recreated using a small diamond fragment. In this sense, lab grown diamonds have the same rough shape as natural diamonds and also need to be cut and polished to reach their final shape.