Diamond is essentially pure carbon, crystallized in its most concentrated – and least common – form.

Carbon is a chemical element* that is abundant throughout nature. It is found in everything that lives and breathes and combines readily with other elements. For example, it combines with oxygen in the carbon dioxide we exhale. But sometimes it is found in its pure, or native, state. In the form of a black crystal known as graphite or, much less commonly, in the form of a crystal of exceptional clarity: diamond.

* All the chemical elements, the « building blocks » Nature and man use to make an infinite variety of substances, are grouped together by chemists in the periodic table. Note:

- Carbon (C) appears early, in sixth place: its atom is the sixth “smallest in the class!”

- Its immediate neighbours are boron (B) and nitrogen (N): their atoms, almost identical in size to carbon, sometimes substitute for carbon atoms in diamond, in quantities that are, of course, minute but sufficient to give it a golden or azure hue.

- Neon (Ne) is at the far end of the same row and has 10 electrons, a number so « satisfactory » that it does not « seek » to react with any other atoms, hence it is referred to as an inert gas. The carbon atom, which has only 6 electrons, tries to « emulate » neon by sharing four additional electrons with neighbouring atoms. This sharing forms chemical bonds creating, at times, diamond’s crystal structure.