Does anyone out there have either a synthetic MnTiO3 or Tephroite that they are willing to trade? If there is anything needed in return let me know... we do have a decent collection of synthetic substrates.
Hi Dave,
I'm assuming you are looking for a Mn standard?
Story time... when I started in microanalysis at UC Berkeley, I was fortunate enough to spend a day or two writing some 100 letters to authors of articles describing synthetic minerals which I had found in back issues of the American Mineralogist (back in the day when a piece of paper, a letter and a stamp were required to communicate long distance).
But the good news is that I got an amazing response from all over the world. One of the best surprises I got was a half dozen transition metal oxide crystals from the Purdue Crystal Lab. Including Cr2O3, MnO, CoO, NiO, ZnO and SnO2. I still have those grains in some of my standard mounts and they are really nice because of their stoichiometry and purity. Perfect for use as MAN and interference standards. The last time I contacted the lab at Purdue I was informed by someone new that I could get more material at $1000 per gram. Maybe things have changed by now, I don't know.
But in the meantime you might want to check the Open Letter To the Microanalysis Community letter signed by 99 of our colleagues, but particularly the pdf of the "Action Plan" which in the appendix details many sources for various materials that we were able to put together, including George Rossman's private collection:
https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1415.msg10929#msg10929The "Action Plan" is an attachment to the post linked above, so you'll need to login to see it.
I know that Will Nachlas, Aurelien Moy and John Fournelle are working with several commercial crystal growers trying to obtain several grams of material of various synthetic minerals for initial characterization. The idea being that if a commercial (or national lab) source for various synthetic minerals is discovered that is of high enough purity and excellent stoichiometry, we will purchase a few hundred grams for eventual global distribution in a so called "consensus" standard mount where we have two (or more) materials for each element of geological interest. That we we can compare k-ratios between labs to determine inter-laboratory consensus. Maybe then we will truly have a global scientific basis for microanalysis...
The first post in that topic lays out the issues well enough I think:
https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1415.0