Mineralogical Analyses
Mineralogical characterization expertise to optimize your resources ATOMIN-DRC offers a service of mineralogical characterizations of rocks, mineral resources, and ores, both for exploration and ore processing, and which is tailored to the specific needs of each client.
We offer mineralogical analyses by Optical Microscopy.
Typical Use:
- Mineral Identification
- Description of Mineral Texture
Mineralogical study is of crucial importance in the mining industry, requiring great precision. It generally begins with an analysis under the optical microscope due to the wealth of information it can provide (operator expertise being crucial). Mineralogical identification is based on the reaction of minerals to light. In the case of the optical microscope, it is transmitted light for transparent minerals (silicates, carbonates, etc.), and incident light for opaque minerals (sulfides, oxides, and hydroxides). Identifying minerals under the optical microscope involves determining certain properties such as color, shape, pleochroism, (bi)refringence, extinction angle, optical sign (for transparent minerals), (bi)reflectance, anisotropy, and reflectance power (for opaque minerals). Other physical properties are exploited, such as relief, cleavage, polishing hardness, internal reflections, etc.
In any mineralogical characterization study, the optical microscope allows a preliminary study of great importance that leads to the identification of mineral phases, describing their size and mix, and allows targeting areas of interest (on the mineral or site scale) to be studied in more detail with other advanced techniques that allow complementary characterizations and go beyond the limits of microscopic study, which is mostly qualitative.