Determination of the internal structural heterogeneity of natural diamond: Methodological aspects of using confocal Raman spectroscopy with polarization analysis

Aim. To describe a technique for studying the internal structural heterogeneity of natural diamond crystals, based on confocal Raman spectroscopy with polarization analysis, including angular resolution, at high spectral (0.5–0.6 cm–1) and spatial (1 μm) resolution. Results. The parameters of the F2g vibrational mode in diamond (position, width, intensity, shape, including the Gaussian and Lorentzian contributions to the broadening) are determined by the superposition influence of a number of factors, including the type and content of structural stresses, deformations, various types of defects, as well as orientation of crystallographic axes of the crystal relative to the directions of incident and scattered rays and the directions of their electric polarization vectors. The proposed analytical technique includes: (1) analysis of the crystallographic orientation of the sample in the spectrometer coordinate system and possible misorientations of its fragments with an error of ≈8–15°; (2) visualization of the distribution of structural stresses, deformations, twins, impurity defects and their associates based on sample surface mapping by spectral parameters of the F2g vibration mode; (3) obtaining statistical characteristics of the internal structural heterogeneity of the samples based on diagrams of spectral parameter frequency with a statistically significant number (≈103): unimodality (uni-, bimodal distributions) and distribution dispersion (from ≈0.1 to ≈0.6 cm–1 for width and from ≈0.04 to ≈0.6 cm–1 for line position). The procedure was tested using two synthetic CVD diamond single crystals doped with nitrogen and boron. The possibility of typification of natural samples by statistical characteristics of internal heterogeneity is considered using the example of samples from kimberlite pipes of Yakutia and placers of the Western Cis-Urals. Conclusions. A method for determining the internal structural heterogeneity of natural diamond crystals based on confocal Raman spectroscopy with polarization analysis is proposed. The possibility of using statistical characteristics of heterogeneity as a typomorphic feature of the original diamond source is demonstrated. The proposed diagrams are promising for sample comparison and typification.