| Abstract/Notes | Electron microprobe analysis of barikaite (Topa et al., 2013) indicates the chemical formula Ag2.90Tl0.04Pb9.31As11.26Sb8.12S40.37. Barikaite is monoclinic, with a 8.533(1) Å, b 8.075(1) Å, c 24.828(2) Å, and β 99.077(1)°; unit-cell volume 1689.2 Å3 and the space-group setting is P21/n. This compares well with the unit-cell parameters of rathite Pb10Tl0.9As17.9Sb1.3Ag2S40 from the Lengenbach deposit with the same lattice setting. Barikaite is a member of sartorite homologous series (N = 4). The unit cell of barikaite contains eight cation sites and ten anion sites. Four of the cation sites have mixed occupancies – the split sites As2–Sb2, As3–Sb3, Ag5–As5 and the site Me6 with three cations involved. Two of the lead sites, Pb1 and Pb2, display tricapped trigonal prismatic coordinations and alternate along the 8.53 Å a direction. They form zig-zag walls parallel to (001). There are three distinct [100] columns of alternating cations, As1–(As, Sb)2, Sb4–(As, Sb)3 and (As, Ag)5–(Pb, Sb)6 which together form trapezoidally configured single (013) layers. These layers aggregate into tightly-bonded double layers, separated by lone electron pair micelles. In barikaite, the predominantly As-occupied and Sb-occupied sites are distributed in a chess-board-like scheme. |
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