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The process of color-enhancing a diamond consists of 2 steps: Irradiation
and Annealment.
Together they enable a nearly colorless stone to obtain a beautiful
variety of colors. |
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| Irradiation |
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What It Does?
Irradiation activates the diamond’s color center
– a network of atoms and subatomic particles that work
in a way that gives each diamond a particular color. Natural
color in a diamond comes from the presence of trace impurities
in the stone or structural irregularities at its atomic level.
Irradiation promotes changes in the stone’s atomic structure
in the laboratory – with the same result: the diamond
gains color. In nature the process of acquiring color lasts
thousands of years - in the lab it takes only a few hours.
How It’s Done?
Currently the safest way to irradiate diamonds is by using a
Linear Accelerator - a sort of a ‘gun’
that fires a pulsed beam of electrons at the diamond, creating
the color centers that induce color to appear in the stone.
This process is also known as low-energy
electron bombardment. |
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| Annealment |
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Exposure to electrons gives diamonds a greenish blue or blue
color. In order to get the whole multitude of colors, irradiation
must be followed by annealment. Here the diamonds are heated
in an oxygen-free environment to high temperatures (450?C/900?F
and up). The stones’ atomic structures rearrange and combine
with imperfections already present in the diamond, resulting
in a range of new colors. Annealment is a process that mimics
nature, since natural heating in the right environment can alter
a diamond’s color as well.
Lotus
only uses the safest current methods of irradiation and annealment.
Other methods can utilize protons and neutrons, but these types
of treatments may result in radioactivity in the diamond, so
they’re best avoided.
Read
more on the history of the enhancement process. |
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