Alburnite mineral

Alburnite is the natural silver-germanium sulfide-telluride mineral Ag8GeTe2S4, listed as approved IMA 2012-073 in the September 2026 IMA-CNMNC list. The original 2013 approval announcement identifies the Cârnicel vein, Roşia Montană deposit, Apuseni Mountains, Romania, as its type locality. This species remains distinct from argyrodite and from generic Te-bearing material historically called argyrodite. A 2016 study of a Măgura vein specimen reported an arsenic-bearing phase as alburnite using optical microscopy and SEM-EDS, but explicitly left its identity unresolved: it could have alburnite symmetry or be a distinct phase. Its nonstoichiometric, silver-excess EDS result is not treated here as a confirmed alburnite composition. That paper also corrects the authors' 2015 report of associated Cu-Fe-bearing sulfotellurides, attributing the earlier signals to a SEM charge- compensation artifact involving neighboring chalcopyrite; this is not a correction of the 2014 alburnite description. The complete 2014 description and its graphics were not available for this curation, so their quantitative and structural detail remains deferred. No extraction mechanism, recovery performance or constituent-element criticality designation is assigned to this mineral.

Record source: data/records/alburnite.yaml