Natural quartz stones, presenting the colors white, smoky, violet (ametist), citrine, green and pink, where characterized by UV-VIS spectrometry, electron microprobe, X ray diffraction and atomic absorption spectrometry, to determine the fases and impurities in the gems. In the visible portion of the spectrum, the white quartz presented the highest levels of absorption, whilst the citrine and smoky samples showed the highest levels of transmission. Aluminum impurities where found in all samples, in higher quantities than that detected in the smoky quartz. The ametist, the citrine and the green quartz showed increasing levels of iron impurities. In the translucent pink quartz, titanium was associated to the color, however, neither iron nor phosphorus were detected, indicating the need of further investigation to determine the exact color mechanism.
impurity; visible spectrum; quartz gemstones
