Startseite Growth and crystallographic features of interpenetrant twins in natural diamonds
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Growth and crystallographic features of interpenetrant twins in natural diamonds

  • Kaiyue Sun ORCID logo , Taijin Lu EMAIL logo , Mingyue He EMAIL logo , Zhonghua Song , Jian Zhang und Jie Ke
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 14. August 2025
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Abstract

The different morphologies of diamond crystals reflect the growth conditions and provide valuable information about the processes that led to the formation of the diamond. Diamond twins only occur during growth and only through reticular merohedry, which has a significant effect on the physical properties of the diamond. However, due to the scarcity of samples, particularly samples with interpenetrant twins, few investigations have been conducted on their morphological features and related formation mechanisms. In this study, natural diamonds with interpenetrant twins from the Republic of the Congo were analyzed to investigate the crystallographic features and related growth formation mechanisms using scanning electron microscopy and micro-computed tomography. The results reveal that all the samples exhibit cubic habits with deformation and a rough appearance, accompanied by fibrous growth layers, indicating rapid crystallization under high driving force conditions. Based on the different features of the crystals’ macroscopic morphological properties, three types of theoretical twin models are established. Cathodoluminescence imaging shows that there are two patterns regarding the formation of interpenetrant twins in natural diamonds, including the origination of grains during the nucleation stage of crystals in the form of twinned positions and changes in the orientation of the growth layer arrangement during crystal growth. Moreover, a mixed type of twin structure was observed, indicating the complexity of the diamond twin growth process, involving transformation of the crystallization habit of the crystal.

Acknowledgments and Funding

We thank the National Infrastructure of Mineral, Rock, and Fossil Resources for Science and Technology and the National Gems & Jewelry Testing Co., Ltd. (NGTC). We thank Shouming Chen of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences for assistance with the micro-CT analysis. We thank Zhili Qiu of Sun Yat-sen University for his help in preparing the thin sections of the samples. We are also grateful to all of the reviewers and editors for their constructive and helpful comments, which significantly improved the manuscript. We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com.cn) for linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript. This study was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (grant 42073008) and the National Infrastructure of Mineral, Rock, and Fossil Resources (grant K1603901).

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Received: 2024-04-15
Accepted: 2024-12-21
Published Online: 2025-08-14
Published in Print: 2025-08-26

© 2025 Mineralogical Society of America

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