January 20, 2006, Washington, DC--When the Smithsonian Institution 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 (Dunedin, FL).
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 for most of the UV/VIS studies, a deuterium/quartz light source for excitation, both single and 7-fiber bundles to illuminate and read, and a 732-nm solid-state laser and IR512 spectrometer for Raman studies
It 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 semiconducting 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 semiconducting 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.