With a high durability and hardness and a series of optical properties which make them one of the most durable and beautiful gemstones in the world, diamonds are undoubtedly the object of desire for many people, which is the reason why they are used in the world of jewelery to create exquisite and very expensive jewellery.
Next, we invite you to discover in detail what those optical properties are that give them a high aesthetic and economic value:
Their beautiful brightness: It is one of the optical properties of diamonds that provides enormous value because it is a very bright shine with a lot of light which is intermediate between the brightness of a crystal and that of highly polished steel, especially in highly polished and pure stones.
Transparency: In gemstones that are pure, light manages to go through their surface and even without losing the intensity that characterizes them, being one of the optical properties which undoubtedly gives diamonds greater value.
Refraction: Their high level of refraction, which is located at 2,417, means that diamonds are considered monorefringent; that is, that their incident light spreads at the same speed in any direction, such as mica, being one of the basic optical properties of these gemstones that make them unique.
Dispersion: Their dispersion level of 0.044 is considered very high, and it is one of the optical properties that give diamonds the enormous ability to reflect light, and also to produce the separation within the spectrum of the different colors that are in it, such as orange, green, blue, red and violet.
The colors of the diamonds: Undoubtedly, the colors of these gems are part of the most important optical properties, going from the colourless ones with some yellowish tint, to the ones in intense yellow or brown. Within this range of colours, saturated colors are the most valued ones, while light tones are less valued, with the exception of light colors with shades of blue, purple and pink which are very rare, and therefore have a greater aesthetic and economic value.
Moreover, there are brown diamonds which are very common, appearing varieties with light brown, reddish and brown tones which have a higher market valuation and have high prices. There are also diamonds in saturated or intense yellow color which are called “canary diamonds”while the diamond that is in an intense yellow-greenish hue is known as “champagne diamond”.
As we can see, the optical properties of diamonds make that there are a set of varieties that are sought after in the market to create beautiful jewelery and are then sold at very high prices; and the rarer the color of the diamond, the more value it will have. Also, there are orange diamonds that are abundant, and in black that are characterized by being opaque, but they are not considered as gems or gemstones but as something out of the ordinary, rare or curious.
Fluorescence: One of the important optical properties of diamonds is their level of fluorescence, which can be observed when a ray of ultraviolet light strikes the gemstone, and in most gems it manifests as blue.
In this context, it is convenient to explain that some diamonds, when in contact with sunlight, become fluorescent and a bluish tone is observed, which changes its true colour, and this can occur when the diamond is exposed to artificial light, when it shows a pronounced yellow tone, which tends to confuse and change the true price because pure blue diamonds are much more expensive.
Currently, there are diamonds on the world market which some treatments based on atomic radiation are applied to with the use of an instrument called “Diamondlite” that determines the exact color after assigning the color of the gem with a natural light against the geographic north, which is possible due to the optical properties they have.
Finally, it is good to know that to verify if a diamond is pure, it must be observed with a magnifying glass of 10 magnifications, which has color and spherical correction to check that they have no external or internal imperfections called inclusions. External imperfections are due to defects associated with size and fissures or produced by defects in crystallization, such as external growth lines.
Each of these properties, together with their physical properties such as hardness, toughness, rupture and exfoliation as well as the electrical, magnetic and chemical properties, make up a set of conditions that give these precious stones used in the industry of the jewellery, the preference of millions of women and jewelery designers.