Er-Nd Soviet Laser Garnet, Faceted YAG Loose Gemstones

These are faceted Er+Nd:YAG (Yttrium Aluminum Garnet) from an old Soviet collection.

This is a new material for us from an old collection, a 40-year-old failed experimental laser garnet from the Soviet Union. It is clearly doped with Erbium, and like our modern pure Er:YAG it has a striking combination of orange and pink colors and a remarkable color change. Unlike pure Er:YAG it has a stronger pink component, suggesting the addition of another dopant like Nd, and the color is also somewhat lighter as well. Most of the material was grown via HDSM aka the 'boat method', which was favored in the Soviet Union for most non-quartz growth, though a few pieces were clearly Czochralski pulled. From doing further reading we learned that the inventor of the HDSM method, Bagdasarov, was a soviet scientist and was working on erbium yag laser material in the 80s, so it all seems to check out.  Codoping Nd and Er can apparently produce a laser with a dual wavelength output which is incredibly useful so it all kind of checks out.  We even have a good guess as to why this material didn't make the cut for scientific use--aside from the variable base color some larger pieces show noticeable color zoning which means the codopants were not evenly mixed, which is not great if you want to make a laser.  While material intended for gem usage was also grown in these labs it would be odd to mix these two elements for that purpose and odder yet to then discard perfectly gem-quality material, so while we don't have perfect provenance the available information seems to match what the seller told us.

Overall, it's a really cool material, and while I'm sure they were frustrated by the production problems their loss is our gain. This cuts amazing gems with a rich peachy-pink color-changing padparascha-like color. It also isn't one of those color changes that you might kind of see if you use a special flashlight or a lighter flame--the change is easily visible under real world lighting conditions and the stones look different throughout your daily routine.

With a hardness of 8.5 it is ideal for use in jewelry.