Synchrotron Data of XFM Experiment Barnes_3282 (January 2011)

Locating platinum group element mineral grains in komatiites and other ultramafic rocks and sulfide ores.

Platinum-group elements are present in the Earth's core and mantle, sampled by ancient lavas called komatiites. PGE concentrations in komatiites are tracers of the early differentiation of the planet (Maier et al., Nature, 2009), and as well as pathfinder elements to valuable orebodies. Isotopic data on PGEs is widely used to determine the age of the deep roots of the continents, but remarkably little is currently known about the mineral hosts of the PGEs. We propose detailed XFM mapping to locate rare PGE-rich phases in a suite of komatiite samples, related to 3D X-ray tomography images on the same samples.