An Insight To Properties And Types Of Diamonds Article - Shopping Jewelry Diamonds Articles

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An Insight to properties and types of diamonds

Being the hardest natural material, Diamond is also the least compressible and stiffest substance. Diamond measures a figure of 10 on Mohs hardness scale as compared to Sapphire (Corundum) which measures 9.

Author: Frank Luca

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Diamond is the perfect thermal conductor and has relatively low thermal expansion. Diamonds repel water because of the negative electron affinity which makes them to accept hydrocarbons like wax or grease. Some diamonds are semiconductors but majority of the diamonds cannot conduct electricity really good. If high temperature is exposed, then diamonds can get burnt. The appearance of diamonds reflecting brilliance and fire is subjected to its high refractive index and high dispersion.

Types of Diamonds:
Natural Diamonds- Such diamonds type are diversified by the quantity and type of impurities present within them:

1.Type Ia- This type of diamond is most commonly found and contain up to 0.3% nitrogen.
2.Type Ib- Diamonds of this category are very rare to find and contain up to 500ppm nitrogen. Synthetic industrial diamonds belong to this category of diamonds.
3.Type IIa- Little amount of nitrogen is present in diamond category and cannot be readily detected even using ultraviolet absorption or infrared methods.
4.Type IIb- These diamonds have so little nitrogen that the crystal is a p-type semiconductor.

Thin Film Diamonds- Usually a process known as Chemical Vapor Deposition is employed to deposit thin films of polycrystalline diamond. This process takes the advantages of properties of diamonds and put zero-wear coatings on machine parts. This process also uses diamond coatings to pull the heat from electronic parts.

Synthetic Industrial Diamonds- Such diamonds are created through high pressure high temperature Synthetic (HPHT) process. In this process, a metallic catalyst and graphite are put in a hydraulic press and allowed to go through high pressure and temperature for few hours. After some time the graphite gets converted to diamonds. However the newly formed diamonds are few millimeters in size and are not ready to be used as gemstones. They are though useful as edges on cutting tools and drill-bits. Further these can be compressed to produce extremely high pressures. A noticeable trend is that although this diamond can be used to grind, cut and polish but cannot be used to machine alloys of iron as diamond abrades really quickly because of reaction between carbon and iron.

About Author

The author has been providing help to the jewelry customers for many years through his expertise and experience of the field. He has written numbers of article to educate the customers on all aspects of engagement rings, loose diamonds, wedding rings and other jewelries. For more information please visit http://www.glimmerrocks.com

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An Insight to properties and types of diamonds