If this has been asked before please link for me as I can’t search.
What is the difference between Briolite and Diamonds?
From what I have read on the web, Briolite is “indistinguishable” from real diamonds, jewelers can’t tell the difference between them, they can cut glass, they are virtually identical except they aren’t naturally made, etc…
Is any of this true?
I mean my sources of this information is extremely reputable and all (retailers that sell briolite jewelry) :rolleyes:
I can’t seem to find any more information other than what the retailers tell me. So what’s the straight dope???
I rather doubt it. At the very least, any jeweler who has a thermal diamond tester can tell them apart. Diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of any other known substance, which makes it a very useful property for distinguishing between real diamonds and the various stones used to simulate them.
Some of those sites call it Briolite™, yet a quick search of the US trademark database reveals no such beast.
Briolite doesn’t show up in several online dictionaries, although briolette does:
Perhaps briolite is a new age spelling of briolette, but still that’s a cut not a type of mineral or glass.
I’d wager that a briolette cut diamond would be indistinguishable from a diamond, but a briolette cut quartz could be distinguished.
This guide on ShopNetwork describes Briolite as essentially synthetic, lab-grown diamonds, but due to FTC regulations, they must be labeled as “simulated.”
They’re pretty confident about the stuff, though:
Oh, so it IS diamond. That’s different altogether. What might give them away is the perfection; natural diamonds usually have at least some flaws and inclusions.
These guys use RFI to coat cubic zirconia with diamond-like carbon, and sell the result as gemstones. However, they don’t call it Briolite.
Maybe someone else is doing the same thing, and giving it a fancy sounding name.
I don’t think so. The main methods for diamond gem manufacture are high pressure, high temperature, and vapor deposition. All I find on RFI diamond formation is film production.
You’d think there’d be something written down on the internets if anyone had actually worked out a method of making bulk diamond via RFI. It’d be quite a breakthrough for far more than jewelry applications.
If it’s just a surface coating, what’s the substrate? Surely, the physical properties of whatever material it is would give it away. There’s no way they can match the density, refractive index, x-ray diffraction pattern and thermal conductivity with just a film coating.
Moisonite has the same thermal properties of a natural diamond, and that’s why we have another tester which works on light transmission. But I can ususally spot a Moisonite by just looking with a 10x loupe.
I don’t think it’s done by RFI, but here are a few articles on the lab-grown jewelry quality diamonds. The tech is at least three years old, because I considered getting one for my wife’s engagement ring just to spite DeBeers. The Wikipedia article below has most of the details; it looks like chemical vapor deposition and high pressure are the two methods used.
Here are
Gemesis - fancy yellow stones, these are the guys that the famous Wired article was about
Not quite. Moissonite’s thermal conductivity is around 500 W/mK, while diamond’s is up around 2,000 W/mK; however, apparently you’re right that typical thermal testers can’t reliably distinguish the two, because difference is within their margin of error.
I’m interested in whatever you can find out about this Briolite. This is the first I’m hearing about it.
After reading the above, it’s pretty clear to me that Briolite is not really diamond. Their FAQ is pretty misleading:
I’ve checked the FTC website and can’t find that rule anywhere. Also note that they really hammer home that a hypothetical simulant could be real diamond, but don’t ever say that Briolite has the same properties. They challenge the consumer with “simple-to-fail” tests:
and
It looks like they’ll take it back regardless of whether you believe it’s a diamond. All of the wording on that page is full of hedge terms. It’s not that much different from the weasel-worded Diamond Nexus Labs page (note that they are not “Nexus Diamond Labs”).
Thanks all for the replies! It’s amazingly difficult to find any “real” information about Briolite on the web. It all comes from sources who sell these particular stones.
I look forward to seeing what samclem’s gemologist has to say about this.