Application of Quartz LA-ICP-MS Analysis in the Evaluation of High-Purity Quartz Deposits

作者：Hongjie Wang, Fangyue Wang, Yan Zhao, Xueyi Xu, Baodi Wang, Yu Fan, Liang Zhang, Feng Guo · 发表于：Minerals · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3390/min15040400 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Geological and Geochemical Analysis、Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping、Hydrocarbon exploration and reservoir analysis

High-purity quartz is considered one of the world’s scarce mineral resources. During the evaluation process of high-purity quartz raw material deposits, metallurgical purification evaluation experiments are often required to assess the quality of quartz. However, these experiments are costly and time-consuming, and have other drawbacks. In addition, high-purity quartz is difficult to analyze by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) due to its extremely low impurity content, resulting in low accuracy. It is therefore essential to assess the validity of the results obtained from LA-ICP-MS analysis of quartz minerals and to establish an efficient and cost-effective method for the evaluation of high-purity quartz deposits. We selected samples from the high-purity quartz deposits at Yamansu and Taerlang in Xinjiang, which exhibit uniform cathodoluminescence (CL) characteristics. We conducted trace element analysis of quartz using four methods: nanosecond laser dot ablation, femtosecond laser dot ablation, femtosecond laser line ablation, and femtosecond laser area scanning. Combined with the results of metallurgical purification, the stability of quartz LA-ICP-MS analytical data and the proximity to the purification results are evaluated by using two methods, i.e., the comparison of casting diagrams and the construction of comprehensive stability and proximity evaluation models. The results show that the femtosecond laser line ablation has the bes...