Carbon flaw

A carbon flaw is a blemish present within a diamond crystalline form of carbon, usually seen as a black spot. The blemish may be microscopic or visible to the naked eye. These spots are undesirable imperfections since they can be seen easier than other flaws. Diamonds are composed of purely carbon and the black spot “flaws” could be graphite structures or amorphous forms of carbon opposed to the crystalline diamond structure. These black spots in diamonds could also be other inclusions (foreign matter) such as titanic iron or also portions of the base element that did not crystallize with the rest of the carbon (graphite or carbonado).

Carbon flaws can come in many different appearances. Carbon flaws can be deciphered as looking like shards of carbonado branching off of a larger carbonado section. These carbon flaws usually resemble “ink spots” (source). More uncommonly, carbon flaws resemble a thin film of black powder drizzling a fissure in the crystal or fuzzy looking clusters of black dust. Opposite of an un-concentrated color smudge, carbon flaws can also resemble paper thin cracks propagating in short distances and resembling angels close to 90 degrees.

The real reason for the un-crystallized formation of these inclusions is unknown. It is theorized to be because even though the material was exposed to the same conditions of heat and pressure as the rest of the crystal, there must be some other factor included that did not work correctly to form a diamond without carbon flaws. Many chemical actions happening simultaneously could possibly cause carbon in the solution to surround particles that escaped the solvent. Another theory is the carbon flaws may be caused by “slow accretion of crystallized carbon atoms from a surrounding composite, to a nucleus of the element” (source).