The potential for diffusing copper into tourmaline, updated

[vincent pardieu]

Dear all,
I would like to inform you that we have put online on GIA Laboratory Bangkok website a new update about our ongoing research pdf about tourmaline:
Here is the link to the page where it is located:

http://www.giathai.net/lab.php

I invite you then to have a look at what was recently done.
Hoping that this will interest you.
All the best,

[gingerkid]

thanks, vincent, for sharing the latest research on diffusion of copper in tourmaline.

[Bear Williams- SGL]

Hello Vincent,

Stone Group Labs reported in the January '09 Gem Market News under the article "Synthetic Tourmaline - Rumors and Reality", the subheading:

Bulk Diffusion

"In a separate report by the ISG there has been talk of copper being "bulk diffused" into tourmaline. Investigations and studies are currently underway and at the time of this writing, there are no revelations.

While we do not want to make suppositions, the scientific and laboratory community has voiced their doubts regarding the practical physical possibilities of such a claim. While there may have been attempts to fill open fissures in low-end material with native copper to fool instruments,it is unlikely that any ionic-type cuprian lattice diffusion is possible. In other words, while we can easily see that copper could artificially be placed in a stones fissures or even fracture filled within a tourmaline, as yet we have no theory for how copper could be lattice or "bulk" diffused atomically within a tourmaline."

I'm glad to see that besides myself and Richard Wise, others have finally taken to publishing printed information that corrects erroneous gemological claims. While the paper does render a good scientific report to show why such a claim is not possible, we all will still find ourselves spinning and toiling over the stories from ISG as they have morphed over time. At our lab we are finding that it may be far wiser to simply ignore the improbable theorists than to spend any further time or research money proving him wrong.

Please feel free to pass my suggestion on to Ken and John.

Regards, Bear

[Barbra Voltaire, FGG]

The Administration of GemologyOnline concluded long ago that it is better to just to ignore revelations resulting from "bad science" . The bandwidth wasted on debating these claims actually serves as a promotional vehicle for those trying to perpetuate it and gives it way more attention than it deserves.