Safflorite is a rare

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

arsenide mineral with the chemical formula . ''Pure'' safflorite is , but iron is virtually always present. Safflorite is a member of the three-way substitution series of arsenides known as the loellingite group. More than fifty percent

makes the mineral loellingite whereas more than fifty percent

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

and the mineral is rammelsbergite. A parallel series of antimonide minerals exist. Safflorite along with the other minerals crystallize in the

orthorhombic In crystallography, the orthorhombic crystal system is one of the 7 crystal systems. Orthorhombic Lattice (group), lattices result from stretching a cubic crystal system, cubic lattice along two of its orthogonal pairs by two different factors, res ...

system forming opaque gray to white massive to radiating forms, Clinosafflorite has a monoclinic symmetry. It has a

mohs hardness The Mohs scale ( ) of mineral hardness is a qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, characterizing scratch resistance of mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fair ...

of 4.5 and a

specific gravity Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...

of 6.9 to 7.3. Twinning is common and star shaped twins are frequently found. Safflorite-Lollingite-Rammelsbergite-55551

It was first described in 1835 from the Schneeberg District,

Ore Mountains The Ore Mountains (, or ; ) lie along the Czech–German border, separating the historical regions of Bohemia in the Czech Republic and Saxony in Germany. The highest peaks are the Klínovec in the Czech Republic (German: ''Keilberg'') at ab ...

, Germany. Safflorite occurs with other arsenide minerals as an accessory in

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

mining districts. It alters to the arsenate erythrite in the secondary environment.

References

Minerals.net
* {{Refend Cobalt minerals Iron minerals Arsenide minerals Orthorhombic minerals Minerals in space group 58