The photo is sourced from rscf.ru
Uramphite is a uranium mineral that has a rare feature: it contains ammonium. Although uramphite was discovered in 1950 by Soviet geologist Zinaida Nekrasova, the name and location of the deposit where it was found were left unmentioned due to the secrecy of all information related to uranium mining in the USSR. It was only in the 1990s that this information became available: it turned out that uramphite was found in the Tura-Kavak uranium-coal deposit, which was located in what is now Kyrgyzstan.
Discovered back in the 1950s, the uramphite sample was subjected to numerous studies with various methods, none of which gave a clear understanding of the structure of the mineral. In 2023, this mineral was rediscovered at the depleted uranium deposit Beshtau in Russia’s Stavropol Territory. The samples were given to a research group headed by SPbU professor Vladislav Gurzhiy, which began to decipher the structure of uramphite. “Today, structure determination is an integral part of studying new minerals; there was some uncertainty with the uramphite, as we did not know the details of the structure of the substance, which means that we could not reliably describe the reasons for the manifestation of its properties and only assumed them,” Vladislav Gurzhiy is quoted as saying by the Russian Science Foundation.
The authors of the study managed to obtain structural data from a very small plate of the mineral measuring 40x10x5 micrometres (0.04×0.01×0.005 millimetres), which was invisible to the naked eye. Research into this ammonium-containing mineral could be useful not only to mineralogists, but also to chemists and biologists, as biological processes may have played a major role in the formation of uramphite. “Uramphite crystals are quite rare in nature. Not to mention that this mineral can deteriorate rather quickly due to significant annual fluctuations in temperature and humidity. This is why we were doubly lucky not only to discover this rare mineral but also to find small but intact crystals that can be studied in detail,” Vladislav Gurzhiy is quoted as saying by the Russian Science Foundation.
Currently, scientists know of 11 uranium minerals containing ammonium, all of which except for uramphite were discovered in the 21st century. Most of these minerals were found in Utah and Colorado (USA), where the source of ammonium is organic matter, including bitumen. There is no organic matter in such quantities at the Beshtau deposit, which is one of the reasons why this study is unique.
