Nature Science

SAPPHIRE SCIENCE ROCKS!

Navneet Gems and Minerals. Synthetic Sapphire

If sapphire jewelry excites you, wait til you see what else sapphires can do. Sapphires have such extraordinary properties, they are being used to create new technologies that are changing the way we work, play, heal, and live. The new technology around sapphires is even being used to create mind-blowing art. Check it out.

Photo: Courtesy of Nanojems

Why would anyone want to engrave the first million digits of pi onto a sapphire? Easy. Because they can! And why would anyone want such a thing? Because it’s beautiful! -- visually, technically, and mathematically.

Well, it’s actually not that easy to do, and only one company can do it. Nanojems is a microfabricator that has a new mission. According to their Kickstarter manifesto: “Nanojems has a big dream - to revolutionize jewelry, fashion and art with a light-scattering marriage of technology and meaning.”

Their patented patented and patent-pending methods of engraving the tiniest figures with gold on thin slices of single three-inch crystal sapphire, with unparalleled precision, is truly astounding. A million digits is a record breaker, breaking their own record set with their Hobbit project where they engraved 92,000 words (552,000 characters) on two gems, mounted on a gold-plated copper dog-tag.

The pi piece contains 200 times more digits than any other known engraving. The characters are so small that two digits can be etched on the end of a human hair.

Photo: Courtesy of Nanojems.

Nanojems has lots of new ideas ideas about how to leverage their engraved sapphire technology and talents for creating micro-lithographic monuments. They are unveiling Instagram and Facebook Mashup gems that can be engraved in gold, platinum, or other precious metals, to include 9 to 100 of your favorite images and up to 20,000 words of text to create custom sapphire pieces. You can even project them onto a wall or other surface with your iPhone flashlight!

Photo: Courtesy of Primoceler

Sapphires have extra special qualities beyond their hard scratchless nature. They are chemically inert so they are perfect in medical settings. They’re even non-thrombogenic, so they won't foster blood clots like other materials will inside the body! They are transparent so they enable optical transmission, including UV and IR rays. And they have an ultra-high melting point, so they work well with lighting products.

Primoceler, a microfabrication company in Reno, Nevada, has developed a new way to weld sapphire to sapphire. And that’s a big deal.

While Primoceler had previously developed glass to glass welding, sapphire to sapphire has been a challenge. No one has been able to do it before now. It’s a totally new technology.

Sapphire welding is done with a laser micro-welder, which produces an extremely small heat-affected zone (HAZ), highly desirable when dealing with ultra-precise design specifications.

It will yield a host of new applications, devices, implants, and instruments, that will be superior to those that came before. Sapphire can make that much of a difference. The technology is so new, Primoceler has only just begun to court manufacturers.

Photo: Courtesy of Digital Trends. Sapphire iPhone Screens.

Soon, smashed phone screens will be a thing of the past. The Gorilla Glass from which they now are made is no match for sapphire crystal. We’ve already mentioned how hard that stuff is to scratch and break.

Now, thanks to developments in synthetic sapphire crystal production, costs are coming down to where they can be used in our everyday electronic devices.

Video: Cnet.

Synthetic sapphire crystals have been extremely expensive to produce. It takes a lot of energy and care to produce a single clear crystal, so it hasn’t been practical for mass use. Screens use extremely large crystals, which only adds to the cost.

But now, the solar industry has jumped onboard the quest for sapphire crystals. Crystalline solar cells have created more demand for more efficient crystal production. GT Advanced Technologies, which produces furnaces for solar manufacturers, has leveraged their expertise to more efficiently create large artificial sapphire crystals which can be cut to screensize. We could see them in high end smart phones within the year.

But wait! There’s more exciting iPhone sapphire news…

Photo: Courtesy of iPhone in Canada.

Apple might be about to put a sapphire on your finger. Or so the buzz says. It’s not a ring. It’s a new home button on the new iPhone 5S. Or so the buzz says. Of course, other buzz says it’s not going to happen this time. And, since Apple likes to keep us guessing right up until they are good and ready to set the record straight. The new button people are hypothesizing about is said to be convex vs the concave ones we’re all familiar with because it would allow more space to fit the new fingerprint sensor.

Photo: Courtesy of MacRumors

But concave buttons are more prone to scratching and damage. So, sapphire is reportedly the surface material of choice because it is the hardest material we’ve got, next to diamonds, of course. It won’t scratch. That is, of course IF the new button happens at all on the 5S.

In any event, we won’t have to wait much longer to find out. Apple will reportedly unveil the iPhone 5S at a media event today! (September 10).

Photo: Courtesy of Glacier Watch Company. Sapphire Crystal Glass.

Read about the beauty of Sapphire all this week, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including Sapphire Soul, a piece about ethical mining, and New Sapphire Pages, a collection of beautiful new books featuring sapphires.