Phosphorescence of Diamond
After exposure for some time to the sun many diamonds glow in a dark room. Some diamonds are fluorescent, appearing milky in sunlight. In a vacuum, exposed to a high-tension current of electricity, diamonds phosphoresce of different colours, most South African diamonds shining with a bluish light. Diamonds from other localities emit bright blue, apricot, pale blue, red, yellowish green, orange, and pale green light. The most phosphorescent diamonds are those which are fluorescent in the sun. One beautiful green diamond in the writer’s collection, when phosphorescing in a good vacuum, gives almost as much light as a candle, and you can easily read by its rays. But the time has hardly come when diamonds can be used as domestic illuminants! The emitted light is pale green, tending to white, and in its spectrum, when strong, can be seen bright lines, one at about λ 5370 in the green, one at λ 5130 in the greenish blue, and one at λ 5030 in the blue. A beautiful collection of diamond crystals belonging to Professor Maskelyne phosphoresces with nearly all the colours of the rainbow, the different faces glowing with different shades of colour. Diamonds which phosphoresce red generally show the yellow sodium line on a continuous spectrum. In one Brazilian diamond phosphorescing a reddish-yellow colour I detected in its spectrum the citron line characteristic of yttrium.
The rays which make the diamond phosphoresce are high in the ultra-violet. To illustrate this phosphorescence under the influence of the ultra-violet rays, arrange a powerful source of these rays, and in front expose a design made up of certain minerals, willemite, franklinite, calcite, etc.—phosphorescing of different colours. Their brilliant glow ceases entirely when a thin piece of glass is interposed between them and the ultra-violet lamp.
I now draw attention to a strange property of the diamond, which at first sight might seem to discount the great permanence and unalterability of this stone. It has been ascertained that the cause of phosphorescence is in some way connected with the hammering of the electrons, violently driven from the negative pole on to the surface of the body under examination, and so great is the energy of the bombardment, that impinging on a piece of platinum or even iridium, the metal will actually melt. When the diamond is thus bombarded in a radiant matter tube the result is startling. It not only phosphoresces, but becomes discoloured, and in course of time becomes black on the surface. Some diamonds blacken in the course of a few minutes, while others require an hour or more to discolour. This blackening is only superficial, and although no ordinary means of cleaning will remove the discolouration, it goes at once when the stone is polished with diamond powder. Ordinary oxidising reagents have little or no effect in restoring the colour.
FIG. 17. DIAMOND-CUT GLASS AND SHAVINGS.
FIG. 18. DIAMONDS IN RÖNTGEN RAYS.
A. BLACK DIAMOND IN GOLD FRAME.
B. PINK DELHI DIAMOND.
C. PASTE IMITATION OF B.
To face p. 98.
The superficial dark coating on a diamond after exposure to molecular bombardment I have proved to be graphite. M. Moissan has shown that this graphite, on account of its great resistance to oxidising reagents, cannot have been formed at a lower temperature than 3600° C.
It is thus manifest that the bombarding electrons, striking the diamond with enormous velocity, raise the superficial layer to the temperature of the electric arc and turn it into graphite, whilst the mass of diamond and its conductivity to heat are sufficient to keep down the general temperature to such a point that the tube appears scarcely more than warm to the touch.
A similar action occurs with silver, the superficial layers of which can be raised to a red heat without the whole mass becoming more than warm.