Diamond Centre Wales: Laser engraved nano-markings

Diamond Centre Wales are registered Diamond Merchants and bespoke jewellery manufacturers based in South Wales. Their expert team comprises of artists, designers, diamond graders and Goldsmiths, who create over 1000 bespoke pieces each year.

Currently there is no standard practice to intercept stolen goods during re-sale making it very difficult to recover lost or stolen high value diamonds. DCW have a solution through Seculuxe, which aims to combat this using blockchain technology and proprietary diamond laser engraving techniques to create a unified standard for high-value jewellery recovery and identification.

Initial research at Bangor University led to the development of a very quick and clean solution by using focused ultrafast laser pulses to write text and labels in variable size and shapes on any surface of the polished diamond sample. Several geometries were scribed on the diamond surface including QR codes, letters and text to simulate typical laser marked serial numbers as shown in the image. The size of the diamond is roughly 3x2x2 mm³.

The height of the text as shown by “DCW” is about 60 µm. The maximum depth of the laser machined line is 0.29 µm measured from surface plane of the untreated diamond. The results demonstrate a close agreement to the size requirements of the client to mark thin areas of polished diamonds such as girdle or crown. The pavilion marking shown in Figure as “CPE003-BU” is about 25 µm high (girdle height ~100 µm).

In the next stage of the collaboration the Bangor team hope to implement their unique PCM superlens to create smaller markings. The company’s aim is to build capacity for rapid manufacturing of marked diamonds in their product line. These marked diamonds will be linked to a central database (local or global) for their quick identification and tracking when required, especially in case of theft or loss.