Origin Identification Of Amber

Amber is one fossilized resin of conifers and leguminous plants during Mesozoiccretaceous to Cenozoic tertiary period which have been long-buried and formed aftercomplicated geological process and petrochemical effect. And in this thesis, someamber from Liaoning Fushun and Dominican were chosen as test samples, and manydifferent test methods, including conventional gemological testing method, InfraredSpectrum Analysis, Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Analysis, Raman Spectroscopyand Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Analysis, were employed to researchdifferences and relations between amber from different regions and also even itsimitations. What’s more, the most important significance is that the study in this thesiscan provide some scientific basis for amber identification and research in the future.It proves that infrared spectrometer has excellent effect in the amberidentification application. And the infrared spectrum analysis results can besummarized as below. Firstly, the absorption peak intensity of C=C, outside the ringin the labdanoid type of diterpenoid compounds, can reflect the amber’s petrochemicaldegree, which can be employed to distinguish between the natural resign and amber.;Secondly, the absorption peak of C=O functional group stretching vibration is locatedin the range1696cm-1-1728cm-1, which can reflect the differences of amber sourcingtree species and environment and can be helpful for the amber’s locality identification;Last but not least, the absorption peaks of C=H also can be found, which can showthat the fatty lipid structure is the amber’s basic skeleton.Stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer was mainly used for measure the13Ccontent in natural amber, and the results shown that the13C content in the naturalamber from different regions are changing from low to high, which has goodcorresponding relation with the amber formation geological time. And this canprovide the basis for identification of amber and its imitations.Raman Spectroscopy Analysis shown that Raman spectra characteristics ofdifferent regional amber are almost same, only with some minor difference about thepeak’s position and intensity, which maybe probably caused by different amberformation geological time. The main peaks characteristics are as below, C-Hstretching vibration at2916cm-1-2925cm-1, C=C vibration at1641cm-1-1650cm-1 and C-H bending vibration at1439cm-1-1450cm-1. Therefore, the Raman spectrometercan be used to identify the natural amber and its imitations.Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Analysis results shown that saturated fatketone (in hydroxyl area=18710-6-20010-6) can be the diagnostic evidence to toidentify natural amber and the natural resin. However, besides NMR, other analysismethods should be used to identify the natural amber and optimized amber, which willbe helpful to make a more accurate identification.Because of the high complexity of amber’s formation time, environment andcompounds and continuous development of the amber’s optimization technology, tillnow it is not realistic to identify amber and its imitations simply by only oneinspection technology. And actually it is necessary to employ kinds of analysismethods to get more accurate conclusion in the identification of amber and itsimitations.