Ocean Optics Helps Examine The Hope Diamond

Dunedin, FL - When the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC invited scientists from the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to study the optical properties of a suite of colored diamonds, including the famous Hope Diamond, they called in Ocean Optics. Ocean Optics is a global leader in optical sensing technologies and the company's equipment made the many different tests on the diamonds possible.

Dr. Roy Walters of Ocean Optics was part of a team who conducted spectroscopy tests on the 45.52 carats Hope Diamond, the Blue Heart Diamond (30.62 carats) and 239 other diamonds. Ocean Optics supplied a USB2000-FL spectrometer used for most of the UV/VIS studies, a deuterium/quartz light source for excitation, single and 7 fiber bundles to illuminate and read, and a 732nm solid state laser and IR512 spectrometer for Raman studies.

The study was a rare opportunity to study optical defects in natural diamonds with color, including the largest known blue diamond. Blue diamonds are of particular interest because of their semi-conducting electrical properties. The researchers carried out Raman spectroscopy and studied absorption, fluorescence, phosphorescence, and the spectral and temporal properties of the phosphorescence.

The NRL has been creating synthetic diamonds for years to research their use as thermal, optical and electrically semi-conducting materials for Department of Defense applications. Learning about the impurities inherent to natural diamonds is an important foundation to understanding the defects observed in synthetic diamonds. Analysis of the data is now under way.

SOURCE: Ocean Optics, Inc.