Synthetic and Simulant Gemstones
Synthetic and Simulant Gems
Human have been fascinating by the gemstones in their many shades of color for thousands of years. The ancients attributed magical, mystical powers to each stone, and believed that many of them could cure specific ailments. Even today, we revere colored stones as beautiful, unique, and as a means of personal expression and individuality for their wearers.
However, precious stones of good size, color, clarity and cut are so rare that a natural,as a way to help serve rising demand and make these stones more affordable and available, gem laboratories have produced synthetic stones and simulants that have the look of natural stones at a fraction of the cost, here are some key facts about these two growing categories.
These two terms refer to quite different things, and the distinction is important.
- Synthetics are real gems. (They are made in a lab.)
- Simulants are imitation gems.
n Synthetic Gems
Synthetic means “put together.” A synthetic (or laboratory-grown) gem is made from the same raw materials as the natural gem. It is optically and chemically identical to the natural gem, but it came from a lab.
The drive for synthetics began when industrial diamonds were needed during World War II. It took years to develop industrial-grade diamonds, and years more to be able to manufacture stones of gem quality. Producing the early gem-quality diamonds was more expensive than mining for natural diamonds. Improved technology brought down the price of synthetic diamonds. Synthetic gems cost only a fraction of the price of natural gems.
n Simulants
Simulants are imitation gems, fabricated from such materials as glass, ceramic or plastic. Some common simulants are cubic zirconium, yttrium aluminum garnet,gadolinium gallium garnet, strontium titanate, and synthetic rutile.
