Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

support for expressing solid solution in formula definitions #12

Open
jonnyprouty opened this issue Feb 17, 2023 · 0 comments
Open

support for expressing solid solution in formula definitions #12

jonnyprouty opened this issue Feb 17, 2023 · 0 comments

Comments

@jonnyprouty
Copy link

jonnyprouty commented Feb 17, 2023

Is there a way to express solid solution using chemical formula? By solid solution, I am referring to formula describing a crystal composed of different kinds of atoms occupying equivalent sites within the crystal lattice. This is a common occurrence for natural materials, i.e. minerals. I've included a few examples below:

olivine
Commonly expressed as (Mg, Fe)2SiO4, equivalent to (Mg1−xFex)2SiO4. The first formulation is a very common method used by geochemists to denote solid solution where in this case Fe and Mg exist and can vary in nature from pure Mg to pure Fe, with any ratio of the two possible.

hornblende
This family of minerals is particularly complex, with numerous varieties existing, a product of numerous solid solution series existing:

  • Magnesiohornblende-ferrohornblende, Ca2[(Mg,Fe)4Al]Si7AlO22(OH)2
    • (Mg,Fe)4 equivalent to (Mg1-x,Fex)4
  • Tschermakite-ferrotschermakite, Ca2[(Mg,Fe)3Al2]Si6Al2O22(OH)2
    • (Mg,Fe)3 equivalent to (Mg1-x,Fex)3
  • Edenite-ferroedenite, NaCa2(Mg,Fe)5Si7AlO22(OH)2
    • (Mg,Fe)5 equivalent to (Mg1-x,Fex)5
  • Pargasite-ferropargasite, NaCa2[(Mg,Fe)4Al]Si6Al2O22(OH)2
    • (Mg,Fe)4 equivalent to (Mg1-x,Fex)4
  • Magnesiohastingstite-hastingsite, NaCa2[(Mg,Fe)4Fe3+]Si6Al2O22(OH)2
    • (Mg,Fe)4 equivalent to (Mg1-x,Fex)4

Any thoughts as to feasibility of expressing such non-stoichiometric formulae? Thanks in advance!

I should note I borrowed heavily from wikipedia for the examples. Thanks Wikipedia editors!

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

1 participant