Author(s)

Giuliana Gatto Rotondo, Larysa Darchuk, Marcel Swaenen, René Van Grieken

Academy for Mineralogy, Antwerp, Belgium.
Department of Chemistry, University of Antwerp.
Department of Chemistry, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein, Antwerp, Belgium.

The Darhib mine is one of the several talc deposits in the Hamata area of southeastern Egypt. Several specimens of minerals coming from this mine were subjected to complementary investigation by micro-Raman spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. The difficulty in their identification is the appearance of most of them: they are all very small and only visible under the mineral binocular microscope(×10 - ×40). They appear as small crystals in fissures and holes and a visual determination on colour and crystal gives only a guess of what kind of mineral it could be. Therefore, only after analyzing them by micro-Raman and scanning electron microscopy it was possible to identify their structure and they can be divided in three main groups: one is quite generic and several minerals of different species were identified, such as quartz, talc, mottramite and chrysocolla, very common in the talc mine (these ones are Si-based minerals); the other one is constituted by four samples which are Zn and/or Cu rich, which means minerals of the rosasite or aurichalcite groups; the last group is constituted by two samples containing mainly Pb..

Minerals; Micro-Raman; SEM; Talc Mines

G. Gatto Rotondo, L. Darchuk, M. Swaenen and R. Van Grieken, "Micro-Raman and SEM Analysis of Minerals from the Darhib Mine, Egypt," Journal of Analytical Sciences, Methods and Instrumentation, Vol. 2 No. 1, 2012, pp. 42-47. doi: 10.4236/jasmi.2012.21009.