Synthetic Diamonds or Simulants: Why Moissanite is a popular option

Evelina Bujor
14 oct.
4 min de lecture

Dernière mise à jour : 15 oct.

SAY YES TO THE SPARKLE

A greater idea of love

DeBeers has done an amazing thing: creating the modern cultural association that Diamonds are a symbol of love (and implicitly, the bigger and the more expensive the Diamond, the more love there is). They did so in their 1947 campaign slogan written by copywriter Frances Gerety, ''A Diamond is Forever'' to promote it as the token of eternal commitment and to place the Diamond engagement ring on the map amongst Hollywood celebrity culture.

Why are Diamonds so invincible? If we consider that the lifespan of a piece of jewelry is how long the set stone maintains its quality over time, then yes Diamonds are those sought after indestructible heirloom pieces. They figure as the hardest stones on the Moh's scale (a striking 10), which indicates resistance to scratches. A Diamond ring (natural or lab-grown) will withstand more than what any other gem could aspire to. If we compare this information to the hardness (9) of Corundum's (Sapphires or Rubies), you would think that this coloured counterpart is just as durable right?

The Moh's scale of hardness is not linear, it is relative.

A Diamond's hardness of 10 is x3.5-4 times harder than the hardness of 9 of a Sapphire or Ruby.

There's a breath-taking intermediate, scoring 9.5 on the Moh's scale: Moissanite

AN ALIEN ALTERNATIVE

Natural Moissanite's space origins

Our upper mantle or Arizona. You choose. Moissanite originates from a meteor impact — with fragments unearthed in the southwestern U.S state and discovered by Henri Moissan in 1893, yet only identified as Silicon Carbide in 1904 (as it was mistaken for Diamond for a few years). This French scientist established its beyond rare occurrence as limited to those meteor crater findings or to faint traces found in Kimberlite or Lamproite magmatic rock, at a minimum of 150 km below the surface (and in the same space in which Natural Diamonds are formed).

Seeing as Natural Moissanite is of space origin, its commercial use in jewelry is completely unsustainable. This Silicon Carbide material differs from Diamond’s pure Carbon Crystal structure. Chemically, I’m not sure if the presence of Silicon — not Silicate Quartz, as that is an added compound of Oxygen to the material — is what causes its high refractive index, noticeably superior to that of the Diamond. But nonetheless, due to its natural rarity, ALL Moissanite in the jewelry or loose gem market is lab-grown.

If you were impressed by the significantly lower prices of LG Diamonds (as compared to Natural Diamonds), then be prepared for your jaw to drop at the beyond modest prices of Moissanite. With DeBeers setting the precedent that a bride needs a Diamond ring and with the famous saying “Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend”, originally sung by Carol Channing in the 1949 Broadway musical Gentleman Prefer Blondes, it is almost expected in our modern Americanized society to acquire such a gem for the significant occasions in love and in life.

With Moissanite sharing such an uncanny resemblance to Diamond (and at only a fraction of the cost) most people can now indulge in the appearance of adorning oneself with this luxury jewel.

As a certified Diamond grader, I can tell you that before my degree I would have had a hard time telling them apart. Now I can quickly spot the difference between Moissanite and Natural or LG Diamond in visual identification by noticing the dispersion of both stones. That is one of the first steps I do with x10 magnification observation. This is also visible in the photo-example I added above from Taylor and Hart.

Natural Diamonds or LG Diamonds will figure at around 0.044 of that dispersion indicating value meaning there will be some mild fire, but Moissanite is significantly higher at 0.104 (which is x2.4 times greater than Diamonds)! Moissanite will exhibit a visible rainbow of sparkles.

Natural Moissanite is GREEN.

Need I remind the discriminators of laboratory-grown, that there is no other option for commercial gem-grade Moissanite. Natural Moissanite looks like the photo above and will never be of the quality needed to create the same finished product that dances in our collective psyche of expectations for this Diamond stimulant. In nature, the occurrence of this Silicon Carbide is so negligible that new deposits found (besides the original Arizonan crater discovery in Canyon Diablo, Arizona, in 1893, and the whispers that trail our Earths upper mantle) are highly sought after but not for jewelry. The green shards shown above are from a recognized deposit found in Israel and they are not the gem-quality expected in jewelry. This finding was done in Mount Carmel area of northern Israel, with this crystal photography done by Aurélien Delaunay.

We can also notice that Moissanite tends to have a greenish hue in these natural specimens, this can also be seen as a faint reminder in lab-grown gems that hardly look as icy white as Diamonds or LG Diamonds more effortlessly can.

With all this in mind, I do have a couple LG Diamonds of my own and a small Moissanite pendant. I’m working with one of my Trusted Suppliers as of lately to acquire a gorgeous 5 carat Emerald Cut loose Moissanite with the perfect jewelry project in mind for it.

Stay posted with the design of this outstanding piece here.

I’m all ears for your gem-project too.

Let’s collaborate,

Evelina Bujor