Abstract
The chemical diversity and complexity of tellurium minerals were analyzed using the concept of mineral systems and Shannon informational entropy. The study employed data for 176 Te mineral species known today. Tellurium minerals belong to six mineral systems in the range of one-to-six species-defining elements. For 176 tellurium minerals, only 36 chemical elements act as essential species-defining constituents. The numbers of minerals of main elements are calculated as follows (the number of mineral species is given in parentheses): O (89), H (48), Cu (48), Pb (43), Bi (31), S (29), Ag (20), Fe (20), Pd (16), Cl (13), and Zn (11). In accordance with their chemistry, all Te minerals are classified into five types of mineral systems: tellurium, oxides, tellurides and intermetalides, tellurites, and tellurates. A statistical analysis showed positive relationships between the chemical, structural, and crystallochemical complexities and the number of essential species-defining elements in a mineral. A positive statistically significant relationship between chemical and structural complexities was established. It is shown that oxygen-free and oxygen-bearing Te minerals differ sharply from each other in terms of chemical and structural complexity, with the first group of minerals being simpler than the second group. The oxygen-free Te minerals (tellurium, tellurides, and intermetallides) are formed under reducing conditions with the participation of hydrothermal solutions. The most structurally complex oxygen-bearing Te minerals originate either from chemical weathering and the oxidation of ore deposits or from volcanic exhalations (Nabokoite).
Highlights
Mineral ecology is a branch of mineralogy that investigates the factors that affect the distribution of minerals and the evolution of their complexity and diversity in space and time
It is shown that oxygen-free and oxygen-bearing Te minerals differ sharply from each other in terms of chemical and structural complexity, with the first group of minerals being simpler than the second group
We identified thefor mineral system for each for each tellurium of the IMA
Summary
Mineral ecology is a branch of mineralogy that investigates the factors that affect the distribution of minerals and the evolution of their complexity and diversity in space and time. The concept of mineral ecology appeared recently [1], some of the ideas underlying the basic principles of this approach were formulated and discussed by Russian mineralogists [2,3,4,5,6]. In this paradigm, studies on the mineral evolution of individual chemical elements are of particular interest [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. The emergence of new digital technologies for big-data analysis has revolutionized this field, leading to many important discoveries in the field of structural, chemical, and genetic relationships between various minerals, and it has formulated a new research direction based on these discoveries in mineralogy [17].
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