Sulfide Mineralogy and Geochemistry: Introduction and Overview

The metal sulfides are the raw materials for most of the world supplies of non-ferrous metals and, therefore, can be considered the most important group of ore minerals. Although there are several hundred known sulfide minerals, only a half dozen of them are sufficiently abundant as to be regarded as “rock-forming minerals” (pyrite, pyrrhotite, galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite and chalcocite; see Bowles and Vaughan 2006). These mostly occur as accessory minerals in certain major rock types, with pyrite being by far the most important volumetrically. It is also important to note that the synthetic analogs of certain sulfide minerals are...