Tehm and I recently bought this rather fine specimen of “ruby aura” which is, apparently, quartz bonded with gold or gold and platinum (or silver - there are a lot of conflicting descriptions). It’s truly an amazing piece, but I would really love to know how it is made.
I can’t seem to find any information using Google, so if any gem or mineral specialists out there can enlighten me, I would be most grateful!
I am a dealer in crystals and minerals in the uk. As far as I am aware, these ruby aura crystals are made using a natural quartz crystal. They are placed in a vaccuum with a low voltage electric current passed through them while a “plasma” of vaporised silver is sprayed into the chamber. If the right amount of silver is used, the silver is electrically bonded to the surface of the quartz one atom or molecule thick, causing the pinky red colour via the bond.
Hope it helps…if you hear otherwise i/d be interested to hear also, so let me know.
Aha! Thanks for that. I wonder how the “plasma” is produced?
Hi Tom,
It does look a nice piece. It is possible to get transparent deep red quartz by heating quartz in the presence of iron oxide where the iron coats the surface. This can occur naturally. See http://nsminerals.atspace.com/Boylston.html.
Regarding the “plasma treatment”, this is technically known as Thin Film Deposition and, as usual, Wiki comes to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_deposition
If this is how your crystal was produced then your crystal is a novelty shaped “dichroic filter”. These filters are often used in photography and the sciences and are produced by depositing metallic layers onto a quartz or quartz glass substrate such that the layers are similar thickness to the wavelength of light you want to allow through:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_optics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_reflector
The mystery is solved! Thanks Ian :-)