News — Glass Ceramic

Having thoroughly studied the properties of a large number of glass-ceramic materials, we settled on the so-called cordierite system SiO2-Al2O3-MgO (Fig.2). The trademark SIAMITE® was chosen based on two considerations: 1) the chemical formulas of the three main components start with Si, A, and M (SiAM); 2) Formica established the production of its material in Thailand, historically known as SIAM. The ending "ite" is commonly used in mineralogy and petrography for many minerals and rocks. In addition to the three main components mentioned above, the material contains TiO2, ZrO2, ZnO, Li2O as well as some nucleating, fining, and coloring agents....

In the initial segment of our discussion, we touched upon the fact that SIAMITE® glass-ceramic, created by Formica, is an entirely new type of gemstone imitation that did not exist before. Consequently, many people have question: what is the glass-ceramic? Glass-ceramics are ceramic materials formed through the controlled crystallization of glass. Production takes place in two stages: in the first stage, a special high-temperature glass is produced using almost standard glass making technology, and in the second stage, this glass undergoes special heat treatment, during which nuclei and then crystals of minerals emerge. It is important to emphasize that crystallization...

To begin with, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Karen Avakyan, Ph.D. in Geology and Mineralogy, the founder and owner of the Formica group companies (since 1992), and the author of the idea of using glass-ceramics in the jewelry industry as an imitation of colored gemstones. Man-made artificial stones are traditionally divided into Synthetic Crystals (with the same chemical and physical properties as natural gems) and Imitations (that do not exist in nature) (Table 1).   Table 1. Jewellery stones classification.   Synthetic crystals include lab-grown diamonds and moissanite, hydrothermal emerald, alexandrite, quartz, sapphire, ruby, and others. Until recently, Imitations...