Greenockite

Al Mar,
Your English is substantially better than that of most non native English speakers who come to this message board. You might also post the same images on the Identity Help forum. You might get more people helping with ideas. I don't know what you little brown crystals are. Grenockite crystal are generally hexagonal and yours don't seem to fit that category. I am thinking perhaps sphalerite. Have you tried a little acid on on a cotton swab to eliminate calcite as a possibility, though I don't think they are calcites. I wonder if they might be sphalerite. I think you may have to have them tested to be sure.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

I was register in this forum, I am Al mar.
In Biscay there is a location for greenockite, but there aren´t cristals. It is the Angela mine on Matienzo village,Spain.

Dear Al Mar,

Great photos! They are more likely to be wurtzite.

Best Wishes, Van King

Hello,

As for my area of interest, the Black Forest, I can state that most CdS polytype minerals mentioned in tjhe literature are greenockites. There have only been two exceptions: Amorphous CdS (often referred to as xanthochroite) from Clara Mine and hawleyite from the Schauinsland Mt. All other occurrences do only have greenockite, as far as I know.

Unfortunately in that area no xls have been found. The greenockite does occur as yellow crusts on weathered sphalerite. The only important finding has been specimens of hemimorphite xls coloured by greenockite. They came from 5th level over Kappler Adit, Schauinsland Mine, Freiburg, Black Forest, Germany. Unfortunately I do not have any photo or a specimen from that find. If I get one I will take some photos.

Regards,
Sebastian Möller

Greenockite in the form of yellow powdery crusts (decomposition products of cadmian sphalerite) is actually very common throughout the world. I do not want to include specific localities here. A quality ranking of yellow crusts will be difficult to perform anyway ...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2009 05:32PM by Peter Haas.

Peter, thats interesting about the powder. Ill see it eventually gets into the introduction.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Found 2001 in Kreimbach.
Aggregate is near 3mm in any direction.
Since then only various finds in polycrystalline Calcite totally enclosed and broken if found.
Etching tons of Calcite was not suitable.
RR

Also greenockite in bright yellow crusts from here [www.mindat.org]

RR,
Interesting specimen. If you will upload it to the Mindat gallery we may use it in the article.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

If you will upload an image of the material to the Mindat Database we might use it in the article.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

I am very interesting in John Jaszczak's post - he wrote:

Transparent dark yellow crystals in prehnite-line vugs. Summit Quarry, Springfield, New Jersey.
Mineralogical Record 4 p. 234; Rocks & Minerals 62 p150; Rocks & Minerals 42 p483

I have a specimen I uploaded to mindat-its location was listed by Knoll as Summit, NJ. It occurred to me that when he wrote it, he meant Summit Quarry, and not just Summit. There isn't a listing of greenockite in plain old Summit, NJ. Does this make sense?

[www.mindat.org]

I wanted to show the greenockite specimen I have from Bell Labs (NJ). I don't know when it was made (I assume the 1950s) or why Bell Labs was interested in greenockite. As far as I know, it isn't used for any lasers or semiconducting uses. If anyone has a guess what research Bell labs was doing in greenockite please reply!


But It is really pretty! It's about 1 cm long. I compressed it after using helicon software. There are two separate crystals - a flat plate with some thinner tabular crystals attached to it and another set of crystals.

Is there any way to put Bell labs on the location list - I have sapphire and ruby samples from them as well.

It is semiconducting and has been used in photovoltaics.

We don't list manufacturing/processing sites on mindat, only where minerals occur naturally.

Fluorite with Greenockite xls and Greenockite included in smithsomite psudo casts after calcite Eureka Prospect Marion KY

if you like this photo I can upload to my gallery..

thanks
E

Beth,
It seems likely that Summit Quarry is your locality. Do you know your specimen's provenance? The Edwin Skidmore collected
many specimens, apparently. There are lovely crystals! Do you have access to the references?
John