Trace-element analysis of mineral grains in Ryugu rock fragment sections by synchrotron-based confocal X-ray fluorescenceOPEN ACCESS 

Benjamin Bazi, Pieter Tack, Miles Lindner, Bart Vekemans, Ella De Pauw, Beverley Tkalcec, Frank E. Brenker, Jan Garrevoet, Gerald Falkenberg, Hikaru Yabuta, Hisayoshi Yurimoto, Tomoki Nakamura, Kana Amano, Megumi Matsumoto, Yuri Fujioka, Yuma Enokido, Daisuke Nakashima, Masayuki Uesugi, Hiroshi Naraoka, Takaaki Noguchi, Ryuji Okazaki, Kanako Sakamoto, Toru Yada, Masahiro Nishimura, Aiko Nakato, Akiko Miyazaki, Kasumi Yogata, Masanao Abe, Tatsuaki Okada, Tomohiro Usui, Makoto Yoshikawa, Takanao Saiki, Satoshi Tanaka, Fuyuto Terui, Satoru Nakazawa, Shogo Tachibana, Sei-ichiro Watanabe, Yuichi Tsuda & Laszlo Vincze

Earth, Planets and Space volume 74, Article number: 161
Published: 04 November 2022

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“A fundamental parameter-based quantification scheme for confocal XRF was applied to sub-micron synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence (SR-XRF) data obtained at the beamline P06 of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY, Hamburg, Germany) from two sections C0033-01 and C0033-04 that were wet cut from rock fragment C0033 collected from Cb-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. Trace-element quantifications show that C0033 bulk matrix is CI-like, whereas individual mineral grains (i.e., magnetite, pyrrhotite, dolomite, apatite and breunnerite) show, depending on the respective phase, minor to strong deviations. The non-destructive nature of SR-XRF coupled with a new PyMca (a Python toolkit for XRF data analysis)-based quantification approach, performed in parallel with the synchrotron experiments, proves to be an attractive tool for the initial analysis of samples from return missions, such as Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, the latter returning material from a B-type asteroid (101955) Bennu in 2023.”