The metal inventory and formation of hydrothermal ore deposits

各种元素，主要是金属，对于支撑作为我们现代社会基础的技术是重要的。这包括风力涡轮机和混合动力汽车等绿色技术。重要的是，我们能够有效地找到这些金属的浓度，这需要了解它们是如何在地壳中运输和浓缩的。我的研究关注的是理解导致金属如此集中的过程以及包含它们的矿藏的性质。特别令人感兴趣的是稀有或关键元素，如镧、钕、锆、钨和铟。其中一些对绿色技术非常重要；一辆混合动力汽车平均含有30公斤稀土元素。这些元素被各种过程浓缩，这些过程涉及到岩浆和流体的金属运输。我研究的正是这些岩浆和流体的化学，以深入了解不同尺度上的浓缩过程。像这样的自然系统在微观尺度上在化学和物理上都是复杂的，需要我们开发和使用微米尺度上的地球材料的化学表征技术。这包括利用矿物中各种同位素的丰度来追踪岩浆和从中沉淀出来的流体的来源。此外，在许多情况下，携带金属的流体被困为矿物中的微观“流体包裹体”。对这些的分析使我们能够检查和描述负责金属运输和浓缩的实际流体，即使这发生在数十亿年前。这些流体包裹体非常小(通常为30微米)，因此我们还开发并使用显微分析技术来对它们进行化学表征。聚集在矿藏中的商品(金属和其他元素)的丰度在不同明显相似的环境之间可能有很大差异，其他类似矿藏的大小也可能不同。这项研究旨在了解影响矿藏金属库存及其规模的基本参数和过程。

A variety of elements, mostly metals, are important to support the technology that is a foundation to our modern society. This includes green technologies such as wind turbines and hybrid cars. It is important that we are able to efficiently find concentrations of these metals, which requires an understanding of how they are transported and concentrated in the crust of the Earth. My research is concerned with understanding the processes that lead to such concentrations of metals and the nature of the mineral deposits that contain them. Of particular interest are rare or critical elements such as lanthanum, neodymium, zirconium, tungsten and indium. Some of these are very important to green technologies; the average hybrid car contains 30 kg of rare earth elements. These elements are concentrated by a variety of processes that involve metal transport by magmas and fluids. It is the chemistry of these magmas and fluids that I study to gain insights into the concentration processes on a variety of scales. Natural systems such as these are chemically and physically complex on a microscopic scale, requiring us to develop and use techniques for the chemical characterization of earth materials on the micron scale. This includes using the abundances of various isotopes in minerals to trace the origins of the magmas and fluids from which they precipitated. In addition, the fluids that have carried the metals in many cases are trapped as microscopic "fluid inclusions" within minerals. Analysis of these allows us examine and characterize the actual fluids that were responsible for metal transport and concentration, even if this happened billions of years ago. These fluid inclusions are very small (typically <30 microns) and so we also develop and use micro-analytical techniques to chemically characterize them. The abundances of the commodities (metals and other elements) that are concentrated in ore deposits can vary significantly from one apparently similar environment to another, as can the size of otherwise similar deposits. This research is designed to understand the fundamental parameters and processes that influence the metal inventories of deposits and their size.