What are Human Assisted Clarity and Color Enhanced Diamonds?

Visual Gemological Characteristic Enhancement Treatment

Human interaction to improve a diamond is performed, generally after the stones are cut and polished to completion.

The process can include some or all of these listed:

• Laser Drilling Treatment removes impurities.
• Fracture Filling reduces visible internal cracks fishers.
• Color Irradiation Annealing Treatment makes bad colored stones more desirable colored stones.
• (HPHT) High-Pressure High-Temperature Treatment ability to alter colors in natural stones.

LASER DRILLING TREATMENT

The clarity enhancement was invented and applied to diamonds in 1962 by the General Electric Company and was applied for industrial uses. This style and the similar processes have been applied to some diamonds ever since.

The goal here is to utilize an infrared laser to bore very fine holes into the diamond stone remove via laser black carbon and hematite inclusions making the stones inclusions invisible to the human eye, it also at times can make the stone inside whitish opaque in appearance. This can also cause feathering, a natural occurring event in the diamonds crystalline structure formation process, however can in the laser drilling cases sometimes it is known to be caused by the working of the laser inside the natural fracturing within the stone.

FRACTURE FILLING

Clarity enhanced diamonds, crack, fisher or feathering are the repairing of a diamond and is best described as like filling the crack in an automobile front window or windshield instead of replacing the whole windshield or in this case the diamond of an equal size, you fill the flawed areas in and polish the exposed areas finish.

The idea and beginning of simpler ways to filling flawed stones dates back 2500 years and for that time waxes and oils were utilized, and likely many other translucent ingredients.

Fracture Filled

This is another way to refer to a clarity enhanced diamonds it is detectable by use of a microscope specific to a gemological version that will detect and then display a strong neon color in the stone. You are filling these feathers within the circumference of the stone.
Buying a clarity enhanced of fracture filled diamond does not reduce the value so long as the buyer was aware at the time of the purchase.

While there are many diamond grading services EGL USA Gemological Laboratory certification can be obtained when buying these type enhanced stone, this company reportedly will grade it with the filled error in the stones certification footnote. Sellers are required to disclose that this is an enhanced stone.

CAUTIONARY NOTE

There are 3 recognized (GIA) Geological Institute of America testing results that share what can happen to a clarity enhanced altered diamond over time and through circumstances.

Failures can and will occur when:

• Exposed to the high heats of fire.
• Exposed to boiling acid.
• This third is very obvious but worth noting it is when the stone is re-cut into another shape or split to make multiple smaller diamonds.

The process to fill the fracture in a diamond and enhance the stones desirability comes from a man named Zvi Yehuda and Ramat Gan, they invented this process.

COLOR IRRADIATION ANNEALING TREATMENT

Irradiated Treatment: Irradiated for color enhancement is a form of bombardment (means continuous application, a blitz, continuous flow) there are 4 known bombardment methods so here is a simple overview.

• Proton & Deuteron Bombardment Cyclotrons (not used)
• Gamma Ray Bombardment Exposure Colbalt-60 Periodic Symbol Co Atomic Number 27 (not used)
• Neutron Bombardment Piles of Nuclear Reactors (currently used)
• Electron Bombardment through Van de Graaff Generation (currently used)

These 4 types of bombardment alteration of colorization of the interal surface diamond crystal lattice makeup that causes the colors to be enhanced. Some alter the colors and are performed through high-energy particles physically knocking carbon atoms out of place, creating the colors or making them more defined.

Annealing Treatment

Annealing is a very high temperature, in fact it is the highest for neutron bombardment and lower temperatures are utilized for the electron bombarded the stones both for long periods of time, these procedures are what changes the surfaces colors to a depth within the stones of 1 mm for some colors.

High-Pressure High-Temperature Treatment

The HPHT treatment is also the same process created to grow laboratory diamonds through both the use of very high pressure and very high temperature.
In this case however in 1999 a unit designed and built by General Electric Company and a second unit designed and built by Novatek in Utah, USA could both use this machinery to alter a natural diamond to enhance its luster color, change the color and otherwise add great value to a natural otherwise not really good quality or colored diamond as mined.