Microscopic Morphology and Indicative Significance of Nanoscale Au Particles in Soils and Fault Muds: A Case Study of Jiaojia, Shandong Province

Abstract

In recent decades, the human demand for mineral resources has increased dramatically, and the mining of shallow deposits has basically been completed. The prospecting direction has turned to concealed deposits. For this reason, various penetrating geochemical methods have been developed to find concealed minerals and a series of geochemical exploration techniques have been proposed. At the same time, the use of the geochemical gene as a new technique presented in recent years is feasible in discussing component classification and provenance tracing. In this study, we applied these methods for mineral exploration in the Jiaojia gold deposit in Shandong Province, China. The results show that a large number of ore-forming element particles can be observed in ores, fault muds, and soils; compared with Chinese soil, Au has higher enrichment coefficients; according to the LG03 lithogene, the ores belong to a neutral composition, and the fault muds and soils belong to an acidic composition. Based on the above results, it can be found that the ore-forming elements in the Jiaojia gold deposit have migrated. Although this migration cannot change the original lithology, it can provide theoretical support for the fine-grained soil-prospecting method.