Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Diamonds for everyone?

Taken from here, some interesting stats on Apollo's Diamonds:

All of the samples fluoresced a very weak yellow-orange to long-wave UV radiation, and a weak to moderate yellow-orange to short-wave UV. As a characteristic feature, the CVD synthetic diamonds displayed strong red fluorescence while exposed to high-energy UV radiation in the De Beers DiamondView.

Infrared absorption spectra showed that the CVD laboratory-created diamonds were type IIa, and some contained trace amounts of isolated nitrogen. Photoluminescence spectra suggested the presence of N-V centers, indicated by very strong emission peaks at 575 nm and 637 nm. Also observed were features such as H-related absorption at 3123 cm-1 in the mid-infrared range and a relatively strong photoluminescence emission at 737 nm due to trace impurities of silicon.
I wonder if there will ever come a day that it will not be worth it to differentiate between natural and man-grown diamonds. Probably not as long as DeBeers is around.

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