Gemstone Synthesis

 

Paul Hlava

 

Access to Gems and Minerals, Inc.

P. O. Box 80784

Albuquerque, NM 87198-0784

 

From antiquity, gemstones have been so very highly prized for their beauty and rarity that they have always been difficult and/or expensive to acquire.  Therefore it seems only natural that people would try to mimic them with less costly, artificial materials, often with noble intentions, sometimes with not so noble intentions.  In olden times, let us say before 1800, these artificial materials were mere substitutes or simulants of variable quality.  It wasn’t until the end of the 18th century, when the science of analytical chemistry was well developed, that people knew what elements and contaminants were needed to form the desirable stones.  From then on the race was afoot to produce synthetic materials identical to the best, perfect, natural stones.  These quests benefited science and technology in that the researchers had to develop/perfect and control means of producing and stabilizing very high temperatures, medium to very high pressures, and extremely pure starting materials.

 

In this colorful talk I will discuss many of the technologies used to produce true synthetic gemstones as well as simulants.   I will follow a more or less chronological path to briefly cover the various techniques and the materials they create - such as –

 

Technique                                           Synthetic or Simulated Material

Flame fusion or Vernueil                       ruby, sapphire(s), spinel(s)

Czochralski                                          ruby, sapphire(s), spinel(s), alexandrite

Flux growth                                          those above plus emerald

Hydrothermal                                       emerald, quartz

High pressure – high temperature          diamond

Skull melting                                         cubic zirconia

            High temperature diffusion                     moissanute

Chemical vapor deposition                    diamond

 

 

Bio -

Paul Hlava recently retired from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he was staff member in charge of the electron microprobe laboratory.  Paul  worked on a wide variety of  materials including alloys, welds, brazes, solders,  ceramics, low-temperature superconductors, electronic materials, phosphors,  nuclear waste simulants, thermal batteries, etc.  Paul has written, co-authored, and/or presented over a hundred papers on a wide variety of materials.

 

Paul graduated from the University of New Mexico with a geology MS in 1974.  At UNM he worked as a research graduate doing probe research under Klaus Keil in the Institute of Meteoritics.  He worked on moon rocks, Hawaiian basalts, ultramafic rocks, meteorites, and inclusions in diamonds and has been co-discoverer and co-author on the descriptions of several new mineral species.  Paul has a business, Access to Gems and Minerals, Inc., dealing in gemstones, jewelry, and related items.