DIFFUSION IN MINERALS AND MELTS: Youxue Zhang and Daniele J. Cherniak, Editors. (2010) Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, vol. 72, 1038 pages. ISBN: 978-0-939950-86-7. $50.00 (U.S.) (25% discount for MSA, CMS, and GS members) (http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/Rim/).

Abstract

The measurement, understanding, and application of diffusion-related processes have made great advances in recent years following a period that started in the 1950s and 1960s when systematic efforts were begun to understand the role of diffusion in geosystems evolution. Improvements in analytical and experimental tools within the past quarter century, and especially in the last decade, have made a large body of diffusion data available for minerals, glasses, and melts of varying composition under various pressure, temperature, and volatile fugacity (e.g., f O2, f H2O) conditions. Diffusion in various kinds of discontinuities (e.g., grain boundaries and other dislocations) in the crystalline state has also been increasingly studied; grain boundary diffusion can be thousands to millions of time faster than volume diffusion, typically. The ubiquitous presence of concentration gradients observed in geochemical and petrological systems may be studied to elucidate the system history, path, and evolution, a primary goal in modern geoscience research. Aside from the classical closure temperature problem, thermochronology, and …