Earth and Planetary Science

Discovery of the Naturally Occurring Pure CaTiO3 Cubic Perovskite from Tazheran Massif

Jing Sun

1. State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China
2. College of Geoscience, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China

Jin Liu

Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, Beijing, 102249, China

Fuyang Liu

Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, Beijing, 102249, China

Eugene Sklyarov

Institute of the Earth's Crust, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk 664033, Russia

Ross Mitchell

Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36956/eps.v3i1.991

Received: 23 November 2023; Received in revised form: 14 March 2024; Accepted: 7 April 2024; Published: 25 April 2024

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Abstract

As the parent compound of the perovskite-structured family and an analogue of davemaoite CaSiO₃ in Earth’s lower mantle, CaTiO₃ perovskite is widely used in electronic ceramic materials, immobilizing radioactive waste, and geosciences. Here we report the discovery of a natural pure CaTiO₃ perovskite-C in calc-silicate veins in brucite marble in the Tazheran Massif, Russia. The mean composition of perovskite-C is 97 wt% total CaO and TiO₂, and minor impurities of Na, Al, and Zr, yielding the chemical formula CaTi_0.97Al_0.01Na_0.01Zr_0.01O₃. The cubic crystal structure—Pm3m, Z = 1: a = 3.8301 Å, V = 56.19 (2) Å3 (ρ = 4.019 g/cm³) has been refined to R1 = 0.0451. Compared with the cubic perovskite discovered in Israel, the cubic perovskite discovered in this study is very pure in Ca and Ti. The naturally occurring perovskite-C from Tazheran implies that the host skarn might have experienced high-temperature (> 1247–1374 °C) metamorphism and/or metasomatism at an early stage. Moreover, the discovery of natural perovskite-C also draws attention to considering crystal-structure-related matrix effects in the future of in situ U-Pb geochronology, especially using Tazh international perovskite standards.

Keywords: Perovskite, Cubic crystal structure, CaTiO3, SCXRD, Tazheran Massif

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