Diffusion of Sm‐Nd in Scheelite and its Significance to Isotopic Dating and Tracing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract As the principal ore mineral in various tungsten (‐gold) deposits, scheelite (CaWO4) plays an important role in directly dating the timing of ore formation, and in tracing associated material sources through the study of its Sm‐Nd geochronology and Nd isotopic characteristics. Since the retention of Sm‐Nd systematics within scheelite is presently unconstrained, equivocal interpretations for isotopic data resulting from this method have occurred quite often in previous studies that apply these isotopic data. In order to better elucidate the closure of Sm‐Nd in scheelite, the kinetics of Sm and Nd within this mineral lattice were investigated through calculation of diffusion constants presented herein. The following Arrhenius relations were obtained: urn:x-wiley:10009515:acgs15005:equation:acgs15005-math-0001 showing diffusion rate of Nd is near identical to Sm in scheelite when at the same temperature. However, compared to other rare earth elements (REEs), which have markedly different atomic radii to either Nd or Sm, these are shown to exhibit a great variation in diffusivities. The observed trends in our data are in excellent agreement with the diffusion characteristics of REEs in other tetragonal ABO4 minerals, indicating that ionic radius is a key constraint to the diffusivity of REEs in the various crystal lattices. With this in mind, the same substitution mechanism and a very slight discrepancy in radii will allow us to infer that significant Sm/Nd diffusional fractionation in scheelite is unlikely to occur during most geological processes. Based upon the diffusion data determined herein, Sm and Nd closure temperatures and retention times in scheelite are discussed in terms of diffusion dynamics. Those results suggest that closure temperatures for Sm‐Nd within this mineral are relatively high in contrast to the temperature ranges of ore‐formation responsible for scheelite‐related deposits, and any later thermal environments. It is likely, therefore, that relevant isotopic information could be easily retained under most geological conditions, since initial crystallization of the scheelite. In addition, comparison of this mineral‐element pair over a range of temperatures with some other common minerals used as geochronometers (e.g., zircon and apatite) indicates that Sm‐Nd system has a slower diffusive rate in scheelite than for Sr in apatite or Ar in quartz, and only a little faster than for Pb in zircon. It should be noted, within most hydrothermal deposits where zircon has crystallized, its size is typically no more than 100 μm, whereas scheelite commonly occurs as macroscopic grains. For this reason, the larger dimensions of scheelite would provide a robust Sm‐Nd system more able to resist perturbations, relating to any later thermal process. As such Sm‐Nd investigations of scheelite are akin to U‐Pb within zircon samples used in isotopic dating. These observations indicate that Sm‐Nd age and isotopic information can provide reliable data in all but the most extreme case, especially when data are extracted from macroscopic grains of scheelite that are chosen to be “pristine” (i.e., free of surface alteration and/or fractures).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".