Moissanite

Background

Moissanite was discovered by Dr. Ferdinand Frederick fluorine. He discovered moissanite while examining rock samples from a meteor crater located in Canyon Diablo, Arizona. He later identified this new mineral and called it silicon carbide (Xu J. and Mao H., 2000). Silicon carbide was named moissanite in honor of Dr. Moissan later on in his life (Di Pierro et al., 2003).

Geological occurrence

Moissanite has been discovered in a variety of places from upper mantle rock to meteorites. Discoveries have shown that moissanite occurs naturally as inclusions in diamonds, xenoliths, and lamproite (Di Pierro et al., 2003). They have also been identified in presolar meteorites formed with grains from supernovas or red giants, called carbonaceous chondrites (Schonbachler et al, 2007).

Composition

All applications of silicon carbide used today are man-made in laboratories. Silicon carbide was first synthesized by carbon and silicon (Saddow and Agarwal, 2004). Since naturally existing moissanite is so rare, synthetic silicon carbide is used for scientific applications and in jewelry sales as well.

Structure

The structure of moissanite is one of its greatest properties. Similar to the diamond structure, moissanite’s structure gives it great strength, making it useful for testing applications and microelectronics ^[1]. The structure of elements is held together with strong covalent bonding that gives moissanite its distinctive strength along with other properties that rival diamond (Xu J. and Mao H., 2000). All SiC minerals for testing purposes are synthetically made, due to the rarity of the natural existence of the mineral. Moissanite has little to no anisotropies occurring with in the crystal structure, thus giving it the ability to withstand high pressures and temperatures (Zhang J et al., 2002).

Physical properties

Moissanite belongs to the nanotechnology (Melinon P. et al., 2007).

Modern uses

Moissanite has many common uses today and experiments in the semiconductor of temperature and electricity (Zhang J et al., 2002). High power SiC devices are expected to play an enabling and vital role in the design of protection circuits used for motors, actuators, and energy storage or pulse power systems. Because moissanite and diamonds look similar and have a few similar properties, jewelry stores today market moissanite as the “other diamond”.

References

• Di Pierro S., Gnos E., Grobety B.H., Armbruster T., Bernasconi S.M., and Ulmer P. (2003) Rock-forming moissanite (natural α-silicon carbide), Am. Mineralogist 88, 1817-1821.
• Melinon P., Masenelli B., Tournus F. and Perez P. (2007) Playing with carbon and silicon

at the nanoscale, Nature 6, 479-490.

• Read P. (2005) Gemmology, Third Edition. Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, Massachusetts.
• Saddow S.E and Agarwal A. (2004) Advances in Silicon Carbide Processing an Applications. Artech House Inc., Boston.
• Schonbachler et al. (2007) Nucleosynthetic Os Isotropic Anomalies in Carbonaceous Chondrites. 38th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, March 2007.
• Xu J. and Mao H. (2000) Moissanite: A window for high-pressure experiments, Science 290, 783-787.
• Zhang J., Wang L., Weidner D.J., Uchida T. and Xu J. (2002) The strength of moissanite. Am. Mineralogist 87, 1005-1008.