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Plattnerite

Field	Value
name	Plattnerite
category	Oxide minerals
image	Galena-Quartz-136082.jpg
caption	Quartz and galena sample, plattnerite over the large galena cube.
formula	PbO2
IMAsymbol	Ptn
molweight	239.20 g/mol
strunz	4.DB.05
system	Tetragonal
class	Ditetragonal dipyramidal (4/mmm)
H–M Symbol: (4/m 2/m 2/m)
symmetry	P42/mnm
unit cell	a = 4.95 Å, c = 3.38 Å;
Z = 2
color	Dark brown, iron-black
habit	Prismatic crystals, may be nodular or botryoidal, fibrous and concentrically zoned, massive
twinning	Contact and penetration twinning on {011}, rarely polysynthetic
cleavage	None
fracture	Sub-conchoidal, fibrous
tenacity	Brittle
mohs	5.5
luster	Bright metallic to adamantine
refractive	nω=2.35, nε=2.25
opticalprop	Uniaxial (-)
birefringence	δ = 0.1
streak	Chestnut brown
gravity	8.5–9.63, average = 9.06
alteration	tarnishes to dull on exposure
diaphaneity	Subtranslucent to opaque
other	Non-fluorescent, nonmagnetic
references

H–M Symbol: (4/m 2/m 2/m) Z = 2 Plattnerite is an oxide mineral and is the beta crystalline form of lead dioxide (β-PbO2), scrutinyite being the other, alpha form. It was first reported in 1845 and named after German mineralogist Karl Friedrich Plattner. Plattnerite forms bundles of dark needle-like crystals on various minerals; the crystals are hard and brittle and have tetragonal symmetry.

Occurrence

Plattnerite is found in numerous arid locations in North America (US and Mexico), most of Europe, Asia (Iran and Russia), Africa (Namibia) and Southern and Western Australia. It occurs in weathered hydrothermal base-metal deposits as hay-like bundles of dark prismatic crystals with a length of a few millimeters; the bundles grow on, or sometimes within various minerals, including cerussite, smithsonite, hemimorphite, leadhillite, hydrozincite, rosasite, aurichalcite, murdochite, limonite, pyromorphite, wulfenite, calcite and quartz.

Properties and applications

Basic properties of plattnerite were described in 1845. Already then, the mineral was known under its name, given to honor Karl Friedrich Plattner (1800–1858), professor of metallurgy and assaying at the Mining Academy in Freiberg, Saxony, Germany.

Its crystal structure was refined later on synthetic samples. Plattnerite belongs to the rutile mineral group. It has tetragonal symmetry, space group P42/mnm (No. 136), Pearson symbol tP6, lattice constants a = 0.491 nm, c = 0.3385 nm, Z = 2 (two formula units per unit cell).

Lead dioxide is used in lead acid batteries and electrochemistry, but only in synthetic form – both plattnerite and scrutinyite are too rare and find no practical application.

References

Warr, L.N.. (2021). "IMA–CNMNC approved mineral symbols". Mineralogical Magazine.
Barthelmy, Dave. "Plattnerite Mineral Data".
"Plattnerite: Plattnerite mineral information and data.".
"Handbook of Mineralogy".
"Plattnerite - Photo Gallery".
Haidinger W (1845) [http://rruff.info/uploads/HBM1845_500.pdf Zweite Klasse: Geogenide. II. Ordnung. Baryte VII. Bleibaryt. Plattnerit.], p. 500 in Handbuch der Bestimmenden Mineralogie Bei Braumüller and Seidel Wien pp. 499-506 (in German)
(1981). "Crystal data for β-PbO2". Journal of Applied Crystallography.
François Cardarelli. (2008). "Materials Handbook: A Concise Desktop Reference". Springer.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

oxide-minerals tetragonal-minerals minerals-in-space-group-136

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