Brilliant Sparkle, Beautiful and Durable Gem

Diamond is the hardest and most brilliant of all precious gems. The word diamond fills the mind with images of a sparkling and dazzling transparent gemstone, the incomparable beauty and purity that has mesmerized the human mind since ancient times.

Spectrum of Colors in Diamond through its Sparkles

Thinking of a diamond brings a colorless transparent gem as an image in our mind, but diamond is actually found in all colors of spectrum, ranging from pink, blue, black, yellow, grey, orange and even white. Colors of spectrum belong to certain energy levels. If these energy levels are sufficient to move any electron in the material to a higher level, that part of the spectrum gets absorbed, and the rest of the light is emitted out. The presence of nitrogen atoms in a diamond crystal absorbs violet and blue parts of the spectrum, so the crystal appears yellow. In a pure carbon crystal, the spectrum of light has insufficient energy to move the strongly bonded electrons to any level, so no part of light is absorbed, and therefore, pure diamonds are colorless.

Properties of Diamond

Whenever we think of and hear about diamonds, we almost always think of diamond as a gem in jewelry because of its popularity as a gem, its stories, fascination throughout the history including the ancient history, and all other amazing facts, lore and beliefs. However the utility of diamond is not limited to it being just a gem. It is widely used as an industrial material and also for scientific use. Read about its physical properties below and you will get to know why we all have talked about, sought and fought for diamonds though the the long history of diamonds.

Hardness
Diamond is the hardest known crystalline material composing mainly of carbon atoms bonded together by covalent bonds, each carbon atom bonded with four other carbon atoms. This forms a symmetrical and regular tetrahedral structure, which imparts diamond its hardness and light dispersion properties. This combination of hardness and brilliance makes it popular in jewelry as well as in industrial applications. It is the purest form of carbon.

Diamond’s hardness helps them against abrasiveness, as a diamond can be scratched only by another diamond or something even harder, therefore, they retain luster over long periods of time and hold a polish extremely well, that’s why it is preferred gemstone for engagement and wedding rings which are often worn daily.

The hardest diamonds in the world are found in New England area in New South Wales, Australia. The size of the diamonds found here is generally small and are used mostly used to polish other diamonds. These diamonds are hardest due to the crystal formation, which is formed in a single stage as compared to other diamonds, which are formed by multiple growth stages which leads to more number of inclusions and defect planes which affect their hardness.

The diamond’s hardness also adds to its utility for cutting and grinding tools and abrasives. It can be used for polishing, cutting and wearing of other materials including diamond. Industrial diamonds are not suitable to be used as gems and therefore sometimes synthetically produced.

Though diamond is the hardest known material, it is not surely the toughest one. Macroscopically it is resistant to breakage but it can still be shattered along a few crystallographic planes, where the number of bonds as less as compared to other directions in the structure, quite neatly providing perfect cleavage which comes of use for diamond cutters.

Conductive
Pure diamonds do not exhibit electrical conductivity, because there are no free or lose electrons in its structure; the carbon atoms share four electrons of their outermost shell with four other atoms to complete the octet. So there is no question of any lose electrons anywhere in its structure. But if there are inclusions of some atoms (impurities), some electrical conductivity (loosely bound electrons) is possible as the included atoms may have more or less electrons than “four" in their outermost shell. Diamonds are electrical insulators, but the impurities and inclusions make them work like semiconductors.

Density
Diamond is denser as compared to graphite which is also pure carbon; the only difference lies in the type of bonding. Density is the ratio of mass to volume of a substance. The density of diamond is 3.51 grams per cubic centimeter as compared to 2.2 for graphite. This high density owes to strong bonds of carbon atoms formed under high pressure and temperature conditions under the earth’s surface.

Diamond’s great ability to refract light makes it lustrous and brilliant in appearance. The light entering a diamond gets bent at certain angles, depending on the cut, and slowed down due to material properties and comes out after getting reflected from different angles. Speed of light in vacuum is 1.86X106 miles per second. Density of diamond plays an important role here. Denser materials slow down light passing through them in greater magnitude as compared to those with less density which also determines their refractive index (ratio of speed of light in material to that in vacuum) . In a diamond, the speed of light gets reduced to 7.7X104 miles per second which is almost the maximum for any transparent material. The refractive index of diamond is 2.42 which is much higher than glass (1.52). The amount of light reflected by a material is also determined by the refractive index and diamond exhibits maximum reflectance among all transparent materials.

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