Maucherite
| Maucherite | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General and classification | |
| chemical formula | Ni 11 As 8 |
|
Mineral class (and possibly department) |
Sulfides and sulfosalts (sulfides, selenides, tellurides, arsenides, antimonides, bismuthides, sulfarsenites, sulfantimonites, sulfbismuthites) |
|
System no. to Strunz and to Dana |
2.AB.15 ( 8th edition : II / A.04) 02.16.16.01 |
| Crystallographic Data | |
| Crystal system | tetragonal |
| Crystal class ; symbol | tetragonal-trapezoidal; 422 |
| Space group | P 4 1 2 1 2 (No. 92) |
| Lattice parameters | a = 6.87 Å ; c = 21.82 Å |
| Formula units | Z = 4 |
| Physical Properties | |
| Mohs hardness | 5 to 5.5 |
| Density (g / cm 3 ) | measured: 8.00; calculated: 8.02 |
| Cleavage | no |
| Break ; Tenacity | uneven; brittle |
| colour | silver-gray with a tinge of pink to reddish; tapering reddish gray |
| Line color | black-gray to black |
| transparency | opaque |
| shine | Metallic luster |
Maucherite is a rather seldom occurring mineral from the mineral class of " sulfides and sulfosalts " with the chemical composition Ni 11 As 8 and thus belongs to the arsenides that are chemically related to the sulfides.
Maucherite crystallizes in the tetragonal crystal system and develops mostly leafy, stalky or massive mineral aggregates , but also tabular or bipyramidal crystals of initially silver-gray color with a pink to reddish tinge. In the air, however, the mineral tarnishes after a while and then turns reddish-gray to copper-red in color. Mauerit leaves a black-gray to black line on the marking board .
Etymology and history
Maucherit was named after its discoverer, the famous German mineralogist and depository scientist Wilhelm Maucher , who discovered the mineral in 1912 in his type locality Eisleben , Saxony-Anhalt in Germany.
Maucherit was first described by Friedrich Grünling in 1913 . The exact chemical composition could only be determined in 1940 by Martin Alfred Peacock (1898–1950). In addition, Peacock proved that what is known as the so-called nickel food or plakodin consists of a compound corresponding to maucherite.
classification
Already in the outdated but still in use 8th edition of the mineral classification by Strunz of Maucherite belonged to the mineral class of "sulfides and sulfosalts" and then to the Department of "alloys and alloy-like compounds" where he along with Orcelit and 2006 discredited as a mineral Dienerit formed the unnamed group II / A.04 .
The 9th edition of Strunz's mineral systematics , which has been in effect since 2001 and is used by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), also classifies maucherite under the category of "alloys and alloy-like compounds". However, this is further subdivided according to the predominant metals in the compound, so that the mineral can be found according to its composition in the sub-section “Nickel-Semi-Metal Alloys”, where it is the only member of the unnamed group 2.AB.15 .
The systematics of the minerals according to Dana also assigns the maucherite to the class of "sulfides and sulfosalts" and there in the department of "sulfide minerals". Here he is the only member of the unnamed group 02.16.16 within the subsection “Sulphides - including selenides and tellurides - with various formulas”.
Crystal structure
Maucherite crystallizes tetragonally in the space group P 4 1 2 1 2 (space group no. 92) or P 4 3 2 1 2 (no. 96) with the lattice parameters a = 6.87 Å and c = 21.82 Å as well as 4 formula units per unit cell .
properties
Maucherite can easily be confused with nickel in its massive formation due to its resemblance to nickeline ( red nickel gravel ), especially since both minerals often grow together. Other cobalt and nickel minerals such as nickel skutterudite ( chloanthite ), rammelsbergite , skutterudite , cobaltite ( cobalt luster ) or safflorite are always clearly silvery white or gray and thus differ from the reddish maucherite.
The chemical reaction of depositing metallic silver in a silver sulfate solution is also the same for mauerite and nickel-lin. Maucherite is soluble in concentrated nitric acid.
Education and Locations
Maucherite occurs in hydrothermal cobalt - nickel - arsenic - deposits , where it is usually with anhydrite , barite , dignified bismuth , calcite , gypsum , manganite , Nickelin , nickel Skutterudit ( Chloanthit ) and socialized to be found.
As a rather rare mineral formation, maucherite can sometimes be abundant at different sites, but overall it is not very common. So far (as of 2017) around 160 sites are known. In addition to its type locality Eisleben, the mineral was also found in Germany near Helbra and Niederröblingen (Helme) in Saxony-Anhalt; near Schauinsland in Baden-Württemberg; near Nieder-Ramstadt and Gelnhausen in Hesse; near Sankt Andreasberg in Lower Saxony as well as in several places in the Saxon Ore Mountains .
In Austria, Maucherite has so far been found in a serpentinite quarry near Griesserhof in the area around Friesach and Hüttenberg in Carinthia , near the municipality of Mühlbach am Hochkönig in the Salzburg region , on the zinc wall in the Schladminger Tauern and in rock samples taken from the construction of the Kirchdorf tunnel and the Kaltenbachtunnels on the Brucker Schnellstraße (S35) in Styria .
The only known site in Switzerland to date is the Kaltenberg mine at Blüomatttälli in the Turtmann Valley in the canton of Valais, although the Maucherite find has not yet been verified.
Other locations include Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Finland, France, Greece, Greenland, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Canada, Morocco, Macedonia, Mexico, Norway, Oman, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Zimbabwe, Spain, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), Vietnam and Cyprus.
use
Apart from being a mineral sample, maucherite has no economic significance.
See also
literature
- Rupert Hochleitner: Minerals . Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7742-1577-4 , pp. 125 .
- Olaf Medenbach, Cornelia Sussieck-Fornefeld: Minerals . Mosaik Verlag GmbH, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-576-10561-1 , p. 44 .
- Paul Ramdohr , Hugo Strunz : Klockmann's textbook of mineralogy . 16th edition. Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1978, ISBN 3-432-82986-8 , pp. 424 .
Web links
- Mineral Atlas: Maucherite (Wiki)
- Thomas Witzke : The discovery of Maucherite on www.strahl.org
- American-Mineralogist-Crystal-Structure-Database - Maucherite (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Webmineral - Maucherite (English)
- ^ A b c Hugo Strunz , Ernest H. Nickel : Strunz Mineralogical Tables. Chemical-structural Mineral Classification System . 9th edition. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagbuchhandlung (Nägele and Obermiller), Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-510-65188-X , p. 59 .
- ↑ Stefan Weiß: The large Lapis mineral directory. All minerals from A - Z and their properties . 6th completely revised and supplemented edition. Weise, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-921656-80-8 .
- ↑ a b Maucherite . In: John W. Anthony, Richard A. Bideaux, Kenneth W. Bladh, Monte C. Nichols (Eds.): Handbook of Mineralogy, Mineralogical Society of America . 2001 ( handbookofmineralogy.org [PDF; 61 kB ; accessed on May 21, 2017]).
- ↑ Thomas Witzke : discoverer of minerals from Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia (including first mentions and names). Grünling, Friedrich, Maucherit (1913). Retrieved May 21, 2017 .
- ↑ F. Grünling: Maucherite Ni 3 As 2 , a new nickel mineral from the cobalt ridges of the Mansfeld copper slate . In: M. Bauer, Fr. Frech, Th. Liebisch (Hrsg.): Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie . E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagbuchhandlung (Nägele and Obermiller), Stuttgart 1913, p. 225–226 ( archive.org [PDF; 297 kB ; accessed on May 21, 2017]).
- ^ Charles Palache: Memorial Of Martin Alfred Peacock . In: The American Mineralogist . tape 36 , 5 and 6, 1951 ( minsocam.org [PDF; 658 kB ; accessed on May 21, 2017]).
- ↑ Mindat - Maucherite (English)
- ↑ Find location list for Maucherite in the Mineralienatlas and in Mindat