ZANGBOITE, TiFeSi2, A NEW MINERAL SPECIES FROM LUOBUSHA, TIBET, CHINA, AND ITS CRYSTAL STRUCTURE

Abstract

We describe the new mineral species zangboite, ideally TiFeSi 2 , found in the podiform chromitites of the Luobusha ophiolite in Tibet, People's Republic of China. The tabular to irregular crystals range from 0.002 to 0.15 mm in diameter and form an intergrowth with native silicon and a Fe-Si phase. Zangboite is steel grey in color. The luster is metallic, it is opaque, and the streak is black. The mineral is brittle; it has a conchoidal fracture and seems devoid of cleavage. The estimated Mohs hardness is 5½, and the calculated density is 5.09 g/cm (004)(57), and 3.8358(002)(50). The mineral species and name were approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (IMA 2007-036).

Kamchatite’ diamond aggregate from northern Kamchatka, Russia:New find of diamond formed by gas phase condensation or chemical vapor deposition

“…3). This implies unstable, disequilibrium conditions during the course of their origin 274 and disagrees with stable, high-PT model of their formation (Li et al, 2009. The formation of the 275 studied Fe-Ni-Mn-Cr silicides in the diamond aggregate most likely is similar to common low-PT 276 synthesis of artificial silicides via vacuum evaporation, sputtering, and chemical vapor deposition (e.g., 277 Nicolet and Lau, 1983).…”

Two new minerals, badengzhuite, TiP, and zhiqinite, TiSi<sub>2</sub>, from the Cr-11 chromitite orebody, Luobusa ophiolite, Tibet, China: is this evidence for super-reduced mantle-derived fluids?

“…Sources of data for minerals not found as inclusions in corundum at Cr-11 are Xu et al (2009) and Zhang et al (2016). Sources of data for minerals found only at Cr-31 are listed here (Robinson et al, 2004;Bai et al, 2006;Yang et al, 2008;Li et al, 2009Li et al, , 2012Shi et al, 2012;Fang et al, , 2013Yang et al, 2003Yang et al, , 2015Dobrzhinetskaya et al, 2009Dobrzhinetskaya et al, , 2014. width of ∼ 4 km north-south, resulting in an exposed area of ∼ 70 km 2 (Xu et al, 2015).…”

“…1, Table 1), which are located about 11 km apart in harzburgite near the contact with the transition zone dunite. Minerals separated from the Cr-31 chromitite include the ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) minerals diamond, moissanite, and coesite pseudomorphs of stishovite, as well as several new super-reduced species such as linzhiite, FeSi 2 (Li et al, 2012); titanium, Ti (Fang et al, 2013); zangboite, TiFeSi 2 (Li et al, 2009); and qingsongite (cubic BN) (Dobrzhinetskaya et al, 2009(Dobrzhinetskaya et al, , 2014. Superreduced intermetallic phases have also been found in the Cr-11 podiform chromitite orebody in the Luobusa ophiolite (Table 1, Fig.…”

Enhanced Dilation Properties of Silicon-Silicide, Si-TiFeSi2, Nanocomposite as a Lithium Battery Anode

“…Zangboite, TiFeSi 2 , is a steel gray mineral silicide with a hardness of about 5.5 Mohs, but it is also brittle and susceptible to conchoidal fractures, [10][11][12] which describes the way that brittle materials break when they do not follow any planes of separation, as opposed to faceted fracturing. Conchoidal fracturing makes this material a prospective matrix material due to the morphology and dilation regress from the viewpoint of the strain relaxation.…”