Scientists have uncovered the mystery of the uramphite crystal discovered 74 years ago

MOSCOW, July 18. Scientists at St. Petersburg State University, together with Russian and foreign colleagues, were able to decipher the structure of crystals of a rare mineral — uramphite, according to the results of the study published in American Mineralogist.
According to the authors, the data obtained may be useful not only to mineralogists, but also to biologists and chemists, since both mineralogical and biological processes apparently played a significant role in the formation of uramphite.

Uramfit was first discovered in 1950 by the Soviet geologist Z. A. Nekrasova. But the name and location of the deposit were not disclosed due to the secrecy of information related to uranium mining in the USSR. Only in the 1990s did it become known that uramphite was found in the Tura-Kavak uranium-coal deposit in the Kyrgyz SSR.

“Uramfite is a mineral with the chemical formula (NH4)(UO2)(PO4) 3H2O. Its peculiarity is a rather simple but rare composition (the mineral contains ammonium),” said Vladislav Gurzhiy, the head of the study, professor of the Department of Crystallography at SBSU.

The sample, found in 1950, was studied by various methods, but none of them provided a clear understanding of the structure of the mineral.
“Today, determining the structure is an integral part of the study of new minerals; there was some uncertainty with uramphite, since previously we did not know the details of the structure of the substance, which means we could not reliably describe the reasons for the manifestation of its properties and only assumed them”, — Gurzhiy explained.

In 2023, this mineral was rediscovered at the depleted Beshtau deposit in the mountain of the same name in the vicinity of Pyatigorsk. These samples were transferred to an international scientific group led by Professor Gurzhia to decipher the structure of the crystals.
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“Uramphite crystals are quite rare in nature. Not to mention that this mineral can degrade quite quickly due to significant annual fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Therefore, we were doubly lucky: to discover this rare mineral and find, albeit small, intact crystals suitable for detailed study,” said Gurzhiy.

Scientists managed to obtain data on the structure of the crystal from a plate measuring 40x10x5 micrometers. Such plates cannot be seen with the naked eye. Just a few years ago, such small crystals were practically impossible to study in laboratory conditions.

Scientists from the Department of Crystallography of the Institute of Geosciences of St. Petersburg State University took part in the study, supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation , A. E. Fersman Mineralogical Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Federal Research Center for Problems of Chemical Physics and Medical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.