Moissanite is said to be a rival to all other gemstone because of its brilliance, hardness, weight and scratch resistance. It possesses all the romance and passion of rubies, sapphires and emeralds. It is only found in meteorites and in a very limited areas beneath the earth's surface.Moissanite was discovered by a French chemist and Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Ferdinand Henri Moissan. He found it at Diablo Canyon, also known as Meteor Crater, in Arizona (USA). The synthetic moissanite is known as silicon carbide because of its chemistry and the trade name, carborundum.
Natural moissanite is the rarest and it is limited to the iron-nickel meteorites. Few other are from ultra-mafic igneous occurances. Moissanite is also grown in laboratories and is used as a diamond simulant, apart from gemstone. Unlike other diamond, it is thermally conductive and this property is used as the test for the authenticity of real diamonds. Other things which differentiate Moissanite with diamond are that it is hexagonal and doubly refractive. It is also less dense and rarely has the clarity of color. A pale shades of green is always there.
The specific gravity of moissante stone is from 3.1 to 3.2 and hardness 9.25 on Mohs scale.
0 comments:
Post a Comment