121,123Sb and 75As NMR and NQR investigation of the tetrahedrite (Cu12Sb4S13) – Tennantite (Cu12As4S13) system and other metal arsenides

Abstract This work is motivated by the recent developments in online minerals analysis in the mining and minerals processing industry via nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR). Here we describe a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and NQR study of the minerals tennantite (Cu 12 As 4 S 13 ) and tetrahedrite (Cu 12 Sb 4 S 13 ). In the first part NQR lines associated with 75 As in tennantite and 121,123 Sb isotopes in tetrahedrite are reported. The spectroscopy has been restricted to an ambient temperature studies in accord with typical industrial conditions. The second part of this contribution reports nuclear quadrupole-perturbed NMR findings on further, only partially characterised, metal arsenides. The findings enhance the detection capabilities of NQR based analysers for online measurement applications and may aid to control arsenic and antimony concentrations in metal processing stages.