Gemmological Characteristics And Heat Treatment Of Baltic Amber

As one of the oldest gems since having writing in the world,amber price soared in recent years,the market full of treated amber with heating,recycling,dyeing,coating,plastic imitation and Copal resin pretender,endless counterfeit and fraud methods contrapose amber that even many merchants cannot tell their amber is nature or not,the interests of consumers cannot be guaranteed.Among varieties of amber types,the Baltic Amber has high commercial value,accompanied by the endless optimized processing or imitation products with increasing price.With the improvement of scientific technology and upgrading imitation methods,created diverse optimized process modes.It made quite a lot negative effects on normal Baltic amber commercial operation,unscrupulous businessmen mixed the shoddy amber with the genuine products,infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.To authenticate natural amber product,infrared spectroscopy characteristics of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer is the current high-accuracy method in the laboratory.Some more accurate identification methods only by surface damage to obtain the experimental result,the commercial value will be decreased by appearance destruction,not only injure the merchant interest,but also affect the circulation of amber.The following essay study of the Baltic Amber,detailed analyse the gemological characteristics of the Baltic Amber sample through conventional gemological testing and infrared spectroscopic analysis like appearance description,refractive index inspection,luminescent property,polarization inspection,magnification test and Ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer,observe and compare the amber change before and after heating treatment.compare the Baltic amber change before and after the heating treatment experiments.The result revealed that the Baltic Amber will emit uneven strong blue-white fluorescence in UVA with distribution patterns and abnormal interference color,the Baltic Amber absorption peak(1736cm?1)is relatively higher,in addition,the Baltic Peak at 1250~1175cm?1 could be used as the auxiliary authenticate basis of Baltic Amber.By compared the Baltic Amber characteristics before and after the heating treatment,the experiment showed that the coating color depends on the heating temperature and time length;heating treatment could change the amber UV fluorescent color leading to the fluorescence weakening or disappearing;the C-H bond in the IR Spectra consuming because of the Oxidation Heat Treatment,and oxygen structure like C=O functional group,alcohol,ester and ether etc.increased,and oxygen structure absorption peak of alcohol,ester and ether tended to unimodal from multimodal at 976~1227cm?1,this oxygen structure may lead to the amber change into red.