Ore Mineralogy and Geochemistry of Rare Metal Deposits

Dear Colleagues,

Rare metals occur in diverse deposit types and are mined in substantial quantities that meet the world demands. By definition, rare-metal deposits hardly occur in technically and economically exploitable, worthy concentrations and have high monetary acquisition costs. In some cases, rare metals occur in the form of independent rare-element minerals; in other cases, they are present as impurities in carrier minerals, which constitute the ore of non-rare metals, while more rarely, the rare elements are dispersed in nonmetalliferous rock-forming minerals. Many factors crucial for the formation of rare-metal deposits control their mineral paragenesis, textures, and mineral chemistry. These features affect the exploration projects and the mining and metallurgical processes of the companies, which invest a considerable amount of capital to extract these metals from deep in the Earth’s crust.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions on original research which presents new data from rare-metal deposits, focusing mainly on mineralogy and mineral chemistry studied with several techniques, e.g., optical microscopy, Raman, SEM, EPMA, LA-ICP-MS, SIMS, TIMS, PIXE, PGNAA, QEMSCAN, and others. We focus on the mineralogy of Bi, Ta, Co, V, Te, W, Se, Re, Ga, Ge, In, Cd, Hg, Li, Rb, Sr, Be, Y, Ce, Nd, Sc, Au, Ag, U, Th, the REE-Lanthanides, and the Platinum Group Elements (PGE). These data will contribute significantly to the knowledge about the distribution of rare metals in specific minerals for a possible future exploration and exploitation.

Prof. Dr. Vasilios Melfos
Prof. Dr. Panagiotis Voudouris
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.