Gemological Characteristic Difference between Colorless CVD Synthetic Diamonds and Natural Diamonds.

CVD synthetic diamond plays an important role in the jewelry market due to its excellent performance and low cost. In this paper, colorless CVD synthetic diamonds produced by a Chinese company were investigated in detail with their gemological, spectroscopic, and luminescent properties compared with natural colorless diamonds. Compared with natural diamonds, CVD synthetic diamonds have high-order interference color and more apparent abnormal birefringence. The results of infrared spectra indicate that all the CVD samples are classified as type IIa, while the natural samples belong to type Ia. The CVD samples show lamellar growth and mottled luminescence pattern and have blue, orange red, purple red, and blue fluorescence, respectively, while most of the natural samples show blue fluorescence. CVD diamonds show lamellar growth structure, and natural diamonds show irregular ring-like growth structure. Thus, multiple methods combined with analysis are required to distinguish synthetic diamonds from natural diamonds. This work provides an experimental basis for the identification of CVD synthetic diamonds.