Chemicals/Nickels

Native nickel has been described as serpentinite due to hydrothermal alteration of ultramafic rocks in New Caledonia and elsewhere.

Nickel emissions
Nickel has an emission line occurring in the solar corona at 511.603 nm from Ni XIII.

Nickel has an emission line occurring in the solar corona at 670.183 nm from Ni XV.

Nickel has three emission lines occurring in the solar corona at 380.08 nm of Ni XIII and 423.14 nm and 431.1 of Ni XII.

Nickel has an absorption band at 401.550-436.210 nm with an excitation potential of 4.01 eV.

Transition metal minerals
Transition metals are often restricted to manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), and zinc (Zn), but generally include Sc through zinc (Zn), Y through cadmium (Cd), lanthanum through mercury, actinium through copernicium (Cn).

Niccolites
Niccolite has the chemical formula NiAs.

Breithauptites
Breithauptite is a nickel antimonide mineral with the simple formula NiSb. Breithauptite is a metallic opaque copper-red mineral crystallizing in the hexagonal - dihexagonal dipyramidal crystal system. It is typically massive to reniform in habit, but is observed as tabular crystals. It has a Mohs hardness of 3.5 to 4 and a specific gravity of 8.23.

It occurs in hydrothermal calcite veins associated with cobalt–nickel–silver ores.

Alloy minerals
"Grain size varies from 98 to 530 lm with an average of *150 lm. Minor [elements] oxidation [from an iron–nickel–chromium–cobalt–phosphorus alloy] is evidenced by the presence of a light brown and blue surface layer composed of very fine-grained (<1 lm) crystals on the surface." "[T]he oxidation of minor elements in metallic alloys in the early solar system" is indicated to possess at instances a blue surface layer.

Antitaenites
Antitaenite is a meteoritic metal alloy mineral composed of iron and nickel, 20-40% Ni (and traces of other elements) that has a face centered cubic crystal structure that exists as a new mineral species occurring in both iron meteorites and in chondrites

The pair of minerals antitaenite and taenite constitute the first example in nature of two minerals that have the same crystal structure (face centered cubic) and can have the same chemical composition (same proportions of Fe and Ni) - but differ in their electronic structures: taenite has a high magnetic moment whereas antitaenite has a low magnetic moment. This difference arises from a high-magnetic-moment to low-magnetic-moment transition occurring in the Fe-Ni bi-metallic alloy series.

Awaruites
Awaruite has the chemical formula.

Awaruite occurs in river placer deposits derived from serpentinized peridotites and ophiolites, also occurs as a rare component of meteorites, in association with native gold and magnetite in placers; with copper, heazlewoodite, pentlandite, violarite, chromite, and millerite in peridotites; with kamacite, allabogdanite, schreibersite and graphite in meteorites.

It was first described in 1885 for an occurrence along Gorge River, near Awarua Bay, South Island, New Zealand, its type locality.

Awaruite is also known as josephinite in an occurrence in Josephine County, Oregon where it is found as placer nuggets in stream channels and masses in serpentinized portions of the Josephine peridotite. Some nuggets contain andradite garnet.

Awaruite occur as an ore mineral in a large low grade deposit in central British Columbia, some 90 km northwest of Fort St. James, disseminated in the Mount Sidney Williams ultramafic/ophiolite complex.

Kamacites
Kamacite is an alpha-(Fe,Ni) alloy, major constituent of iron meteorites, with the proportion iron:nickel about 90:10; small quantities of other elements, such as cobalt, carbon, a metallic luster, gray color and no clear cleavage although the structure is isometric-hexoctahedral, density is around 8 g/cm³ and its hardness is 4 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, sometimes called balkeneisen.

"The principle constituent of a typical octahedrite meteorite with about 92% iron and 7% nickel."


 * 1) Empirical Formula:.
 * 2) Common Impurities: Co,C,P,S.

Taenites
Taenite (Fe,Ni) is a mineral alloy found naturally on Earth mostly in iron meteorites, with nickel proportions of 20% up to 65%, one of four known Fe-Ni meteorite minerals: taenite, kamacite, tetrataenite, and antitaenite, is opaque with a metallic grayish to white color, isometric-hexoctahedral structure, density around 8 g/cm³, hardness i5 to 5.5 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, magnetic, with a crystal lattice of c≈a= 3.582 Å ±0.002 Å.

The Strunz classification is I/A.08-20, while the Dana classification is 1.1.11.2. It is a Hexoctahedral (cubic system) in structure."

Tetrataenites
"Tetrataenite is a native metal found in meteorites with the composition FeNi."

It is one of the mineral phases found in meteoric iron.

Octahedrites
Widmanstätten patterns, also called Thomson structures, are unique figures of long nickel-iron crystals, found in the octahedrite iron meteorites and some pallasites. They consist of a fine interleaving of kamacite and taenite bands or ribbons called lamellæ. Commonly, in gaps between the lamellæ, a fine-grained mixture of kamacite and taenite called plessite can be found.

Chrysoprases
Chrysoprase is an apple-green, microcrystalline variety of quartz, where the green color has been attributed to nickel oxide or nickel silicate impurity.

Garnierites
Garnierite is a general name for a green nickel ore which is found in pockets and veins within weathered and serpentinized ultramafic rocks formed by lateritic weathering of ultramafic rocks and occurs in many nickel laterite deposits in the world and is an important nickel ore, having a large weight percent NiO. As garnierite is not a valid mineral name according to the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC), no definite composition or formula has been universally adopted. Some of the proposed compositions are all hydrous Ni-Mg silicates, a general name for the Ni-Mg hydrosilicates which usually occur as an intimate mixture and commonly includes two or more of the following minerals: serpentine, talc, sepiolite, smectite, or chlorite, and Ni-Mg silicates, with or without alumina, that have x-ray diffraction patterns typical of serpentine, talc, sepiolite, chlorite, vermiculite or some mixture of them all.

Nickel sulfates
"The magnetic [susceptibility] of single crystals of ·7 [...] have been measured in the temperature range between liquid helium and room temperatures."

"The seventh water molecule in the heptahydrate salt forms a hydrogen bond and the hexahydrate salt has not a hydrogen bond."

"It has been shown that symmetry of crystalline field for ·7 is rhombic whereas that of α-·6 is tetragonal."

Willemseites
Falcondoite and willemseite in the image on the right are rare nickel, magnesium silicates found in a serpentinized harzbergite massif or an obducted ophiolite at a plate collision of oceanic crust with continental crust. The locality is in the Dominican Republic, which is the Type Locality for falcondoite. This very showy, bright green thin crust is mostly green falcondoite, with just a bit of lighter, olive willemseite.

Wllemseite has the chemical formula Ni3Si4O10(OH)2.

Hypogene nickels
In "the Arctic Archipelago and in parts of northern Baffin Island and Boothia Peninsula the glaciers were apparently cold-based and effected little erosion of the preglacial landscape."

Nickel "occurs in concentrations far above the crustal average in basic and ultrabasic igneous rocks. Where a glacier has eroded nickel-enriched zones in basalts, gabbros, serpentinized periodotites, and similar basic or ultrabasic igneous rocks, or their metamorphic equivalents, nickel-enriched glacial debris may be spread out in the form of a glacial dispersal train."

"Nickel occurs in unweathered glacial sediments in the same mineral phases as those in which it is found in rocks."

"Where a glacier has overridden ultrabasic rocks, nickel may still be present in sulfide grains, but its presence in silicates such as olivine, serpentine, amphiboles, biotite, and talc, can lead to very high bulk nickel compositions in till or derived sediments."

Supergene nickels
For "the Pinchi Mine area [...] mercury ore was transported over a distance of 12 km, as measured in the clay-sized fraction (< 0.002 mm) of till, and could have been transported over 24 km according to heavy mineral concentrates (specific gravity >3.3) of this same sediment. Antimony, chromium, and nickel dispersal trains were also detected in the region."