Carpathite is a very rare hydrocarbon mineral, consisting of exceptionally pure coronene (C₂₄H₁₂), a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. The name has been spelled karpatite and the mineral was improperly renamed pendletonite.

Discovery

The mineral was first described in 1955 for an occurrence in

Transcarpathian Oblast The Zakarpattia Oblast ( uk, Закарпатська область, Zakarpatska oblast) is an administrative oblast located in western Ukraine, mostly coterminous with the historical region of Carpathian Ruthenia. Its administrative centre is ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

. It was named for the

Carpathian Mountains The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretches ...

. In 1967, unaware of the earlier description, Joseph Murdoch analyzed and described a specimen from the

Picacho Peak Picacho Peak State Park is a state park surrounding Picacho Peak in Picacho, Arizona. The park is located between Casa Grande and Tucson near Interstate 10 in Pinal County. Its centerpiece spire is visible from downtown Tucson, a distance of . Th ...

area of San Benito County, California and named it "pendletonite".

Structure

Carpathite has the same crystal structure of pure coronene. The molecules are planar and lie in two sets with roughly perpendicular orientations. Molecules in the same set are parallel and partially offset, with planes 0.3463 nm apart. That is slightly larger than the inter-layer distance of

graphite Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on large ...

layers (0.335 nm), and much larger than the C-C bond lengths within the molecule (about 0.14 nm). This "corrugated layer" structure is highly resistant to intercalation, which apparently explains the purity of the mineral.

Occurrence

In the Ukraine discovery location, it occurs at the contact zone of a

diorite Diorite ( ) is an intrusive igneous rock formed by the slow cooling underground of magma (molten rock) that has a moderate content of silica and a relatively low content of alkali metals. It is intermediate in composition between low-silic ...

intrusive into argillite within cavities, and is associated with idrialite,

amorphous In condensed matter physics and materials science, an amorphous solid (or non-crystalline solid, glassy solid) is a solid that lacks the long-range order that is characteristic of a crystal. Etymology The term comes from the Greek ''a'' ("wi ...

organic material,

calcite Calcite is a Carbonate minerals, carbonate mineral and the most stable Polymorphism (materials science), polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on ...

barite Baryte, barite or barytes ( or ) is a mineral consisting of barium sulfate ( Ba S O4). Baryte is generally white or colorless, and is the main source of the element barium. The ''baryte group'' consists of baryte, celestine (strontium sulfate), ...

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

, cinnabar, and

metacinnabar Metacinnabar is the cubic form of mercury sulfide (HgS). It is the high temperature form and trimorphous with cinnabar (trigonal structure) and the higher temperature hypercinnabar (hexagonal structure). It occurs with cinnabar in mercury depos ...

. It has also been reported in the Presov Region of the

Slovak Republic Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

and in the Kamchatka Oblast in Russia. In the

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

location, it occurs in centimeter-size veins, associated (and somewhat contemporaneous) with

and cinnabar, in a silicified matrix. Crystals are up to 10 × 1 × 1 mm. Carbon

isotope Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers (mass numbers) ...

ratios and the morphology of the deposit indicate that the coronene was produced from organic matter in oceanic sediment, thermally decomposed, purified through hydrothermal transportation and chemical reactions, and deposition below 250 °C, after the other minerals in the intrusion.

References

Mineralienatlas
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/ref> Webmineral data
/ref> Handbook of Mineralogy
/ref> Joseph Murdoch and Theodore A. Geissman (1967): "Pendletonite, a new hydrocarbon mineral from California". ''American Mineralogist'', volume 52, issues 5-6, pages 611–616. Quote: "''Mr. Forrest Cureton, who sent in the specimens, has asked that the mineral, if it turned out to be new, be named after Mr. Norman H. Pendleton, of Santa Cruz, California, who was apparently the first to suspect that the crystals were not

valentinite Valentinite is an antimony oxide mineral with formula Sb2 O3. Valentinite crystallizes in the orthorhombic system and typically forms as radiating clusters of euhedral crystals or as fibrous masses. It is colorless to white with occasional shades ...

''" Stephen A. Wise, Robert M. Campbell, W. Raymond West, Milton L. Lee, Keith D. Bartle (1986): "Characterization of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon minerals curtisite, idrialite and pendletonite using high-performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy". ''Chemical Geology'', volume 54, issues 3–4, pages 339-357. Takuya Echigo, Mitsuyoshi Kimata, and Teruyuki Maruoka (2007): "Crystal-chemical and carbon-isotopic characteristics of karpatite (C₂₄H₁₂) from the Picacho Peak Area, San Benito County, California: Evidences for the hydrothermal formation". ''American Mineralogist'', volume 92, issues 8-9, pages 1262–1269. Max Blumer (1975): "Curtisite, idrialite and pendletonite, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon minerals: Their composition and origin" ''Chemical Geology'', volume 16, issue 4, pages 245-256. {{Commons category, Carpathite, position=left Organic minerals Monoclinic minerals Minerals in space group 14 Minerals described in 1955