Fluid inclusion

A fluid inclusion is a microscopic bubble of liquid and/or gas that is trapped within a crystal. As minerals often form from a liquid or aqueous medium, tiny bubbles of that liquid can become trapped within the crystal, or along healed crystal fractures. These small inclusions range in size from 0.01 mm to 1 mm and are usually only visible in detail by microscopic study. These inclusions occur in a wide variety of environments. For example, they are found within cementing minerals of sedimentary rocks, in gangue minerals such as quartz or calcite in hydrothermal circulation deposits, in fossil amber, and in deep ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. The inclusions can provide information about the conditions existing during the formation of the enclosing mineral. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy can be used to determine the composition of fluid inclusions. Hydrothermal ore minerals, which typically form from high temperature aqueous solutions, trap tiny bubbles of liquids or gases when cooling and forming solid rock. The trapped fluid in an inclusion preserves a record of the composition, temperature and pressure of the mineralizing environment. An inclusion often contains two or more phases. If a vapor bubble is present in the inclusion along with a liquid phase, simple heating of the inclusion to the point of resorption of the vapor bubble gives a likely temperature of the original fluid. If minute crystals, such as halite, sylvite, hematite or sulfides, are present in the inclusion, they provide direct clues as to the composition of the original fluid. Fluid inclusions can provide useful data in mineral exploration, as their characteristics depend on the mineralization process. The methods of using fluid inclusions to identify mineral deposits include assessing the abundance of a specific inclusion type, looking into variations in the inclusions' temperatures of phase changes during heating and cooling, and variations in other properties such as decrepitation behavior, and inclusions chemistry.