Whats the diff between a Moissanite stone and a Cubic Zirconia?”
Hi. Moissanite and cubic zirconia are both artificial diamond substitutes, but they vary in some important senses. First, cubic zirconia is made by melting zirconium oxide with another metal oxide, usually calcium oxide. Moissanite, on the other hand, is a silicon carbide. Cubic zirconia and moissanite both do exist in natural states, but they incredibly rare to find (zirconia as baddeleyite and moissanite on meteorites), so any of these stones found on jewelry will more likely than not be synthetic. Cubic zirconia is softer than moissanite. The scale used for testing this sort of hardness is the Mohs scale, and diamond rates a 10. Cubic zirconia is 8.25 mohs, and moissanite is ~9. Moissanite has more toughness than cubic zirconia, though it seems that neither of these is significantly worse than a diamond. Moissanite is considered to have superior fire and brilliance to both diamonds and cubic zirconia. Moissanite tends to also be more expensive than cubic zirconia, though it’s still
