Formation, Modification and Analytical Techniques of Melt Inclusion,and Their Applications in Economic Geology
Zhang Daohan
Wei Junhao
Fu Lebing
Wang Dazhao
Abstract：Melt inclusion has been widely used in the research of volcanic and some magmatic systems, and now gradually applied to economic geology because of its absolute advantage over whole-rock analysis in preserving the primary metal and volatile composition of ore-forming magmas.In this paper, we firstly present melt inclusion formation and post-entrapment modification on its composition, then summarize the commonly used analytical techniques for melt inclusion studies, and finally take porphyry Cu-(Mo-Au) and porphyry Mo systems as examples to introduce its applications in economic geology, including determination of ore-forming metals, volatile composition, and fluid-melt partition coefficients.Considering the facts that most melt inclusions have been modified to a certain degrees after their entrapment, and that the modification mechanism for most rock-forming minerals has not been well understood, attention has to be paid to the melt inclusion data and associated interpretation.With the improvement of analytical methods, such ambiguous post-entrapment modification mechanism may be resolved in the near future, and in turn it can promote the applications of melt inclusion.The successful applications of melt inclusion in porphyry Cu-(Mo-Au) and porphyry Mo systems confirm that melt inclusion has been an important and powerful tool in studying ore-forming metals and volatile evolution in ore-forming magma systems in comparison with whole-rock study.
Keywords：melt inclusionporphyry Cu-(Mo-Au) depositporphyry Mo depositEPMA (electron microprobe)SIMS (secondary ion mass spectrometry)LA-ICP-MS (laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry)
Publication Date：2017-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：18( 990-1007 )