Identification of Amber and Its Imitation

Amber is becoming more and more popular as it is fascinated by many customers;thus many amber imitations occurred in the maket, such as plastic, glass, rosin and resin.Based on the gemmology and infrared spectroscopy, this study was conducted on the natural amber, rosin and compressed amber.Under the systematic research, the amber could be distinguished by touch feelings;inner texture observations together with saturated brine experiment.The dissolution experiment is able to separate amber apart from copal.Meanwhile, the infrared spectrum of natural amber is characterized by four peaks at 2 932, 2 868and 1 695cm^-1.While the copal resin has three simultaneously absorption peaks that is related to exocyclic C=C at 3 080, 1 642and 887cm^-1.Resembling to the copal resin, the rosin has a small absorption peak at 3 079cm^-1, however, the most apparent signature of multiple absorptions between 1 200-500cm^-1 is the key characteristic identification to distinguish natural amber and rosin.