Cause analysis of chatoyancy of sapphires from Shandong, China

Abstract

Chatoyancy, that is, the cat's eye effect, has attracted many scholars' attention as a special optical effect. However, there are very few studies on the cat's eye effect of sapphire. The gemological features and formation mechanism of the chatoyancy of sapphires obtained from Shandong, China, were investigated by gemological microscopy, polarizing microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. Parallel orientations of the fracture surfaces were observed; light reflected on them, and an bright light band was formed perpendicular to them. No solid inclusions were detected under polarized light, and no absorption peaks of the solid inclusions were measured by Raman spectroscopy. In contrast, needle inclusions resulted in chatoyancy in other gemstones; parallel fracture surfaces with fluid inclusions above cause chatoyancy in sapphires. In this study, the origin of the cat's eye effect of sapphire was analyzed innovatively, and its phenomena were characterized concretely. In addition, this study provides a novel strategy to explain the mechanism of chatoyancy in the field of gemology and will be helpful for sapphire classification and quality evaluation.