Moissanite Engagement Ring ” An Excellent Diamond Simulant
Saturday, 17. October 2009
The Moissanite to the casual observer is a diamond simulant is nearly indistinguishable from real diamonds. It is more durable and more brilliant than a diamond. It offers the mystique of having one of the rarest jewels in the world, the Moissanite.
Moissanite is sometimes called silicon carbibe or carborondum. Its colors range from grayish to a greenish tone. Moissanite is a rare mineral with a hexagonal crystal structure that occurs in iron nickel meteorites.
Moissanite was discovered in 1893 by a French chemist, Ferdinand Frederick Henri Moissan, who mistakenly identified the crystals as diamonds. But in 1904 he identified the crystals as silicon carbide (SiC), which was later named after him. But it wasn’t until 1995 that jewelers used moissanite as a gemstone.
Moissanite is a quite similar to a diamond, making it an excellent diamond simulant. Its crystalline structure is held together with strong covalent bonding, or the attraction-to-repulsion stability, similar to diamonds. It is nearly as hard as diamond. It can feature the brilliance same as a diamond.
Aside form looking alike, moissanite and diamonds have other similar features. They are both great conductors of electricity making them both ideal for use in the electronic field. Moissanites are thermally conductive like diamonds and can even match the heat conductivity of diamonds.
