Basel, Switzerland–The Swiss Gemological Institute said it has become the first grading laboratory in the world to introduce the “ground-breaking” GemTOF instrument in its facility.
The GemTOF conducts chemical analysis on gemstones through laser ablation–a process to remove tiny amounts of material from the surface of a gemstone using a focused laser beam– which allows it to provide more information about the origin of a number of gemstones, as well as precisely identify a range of other elements in colored stones, diamonds and pearls.
More specifically, the instrument uses a system called Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry to conduct chemical analyses of gemstones and pearls.
Like other laser ablation-based systems, it extracts chemical information from a few tiny laser-ablated pits, which usually are restricted to the girdles of gemstones.
