Brian Jicha
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries all need metals, and demand for them is rising fast. Much of the world's silver, gold, copper, antimony, and arsenic comes from a particular kind of ore body known as a high-sulfidation epithermal deposit — acidic, sulfur-rich rock formed when hot fluids rising off a cooling body of magma react with rock near the Earth's surface.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
high-sulfidation epithermal deposits
silver
ore deposits
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Characterize the elemental and isotopic compositions of silver-rich versus silver-poor ore mineral assemblages at the Filo Del Sol deposit, together with the hydrothermal alteration minerals that formed with them.
- Determine the relative and absolute timing of silver enrichment within the deposit using in-situ 40Ar/39Ar geochronology, an argon-based dating method, on alunite and other potassium-bearing alteration minerals.
- Apply in-situ sulfur isotope and trace-element analyses collected simultaneously from sulfides, sulfosalts, and sulfates to reconstruct the chemistry of the fluids that deposited silver.
- Constrain the physicochemical conditions — such as temperature, acidity, and fluid composition — of the magmatic-hydrothermal fluids responsible for silver enrichment, and test competing models for its origin.
More about the research
Decades of research have worked out what conditions concentrate gold and copper in these systems, but far less is known about silver. Silver is usually recovered as a by-product, and nobody can reliably predict which parts of a deposit will be silver-rich and which will be barren, which makes it hard to judge whether a prospect is worth mining.
Why it matters
Silver is needed in growing quantities for solar panels and batteries, yet exploration geologists cannot predict where high-grade silver zones sit within sulfur-rich epithermal deposits. Determining the conditions and timing that concentrate silver at Filo Del Sol could improve targeting strategies at similar deposits in the United States and worldwide, and the project trains students in skills used by the mining industry.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Aurelie Germa
University of South Florida, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
Constrain the absolute and relative ages of magma intrusion episodes in Utah's San Rafael Volcanic Field, using high-precision 40Ar/39Ar dating and paleomagnetic data, to count intrusive events and calculate their rate.
Alison Graettinger
University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine at what depths silica-rich and basaltic magmas build up beneath Askja and how often magma is refilled, using plagioclase and clinopyroxene mineral analyses and gabbro xenoliths, chunks of deep rock carried up by eruptions.
David Moecher
University of Kentucky, KY·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine whether monazite carried by rivers from the Appalachians to the Atlantic coast comes from metamorphic rocks, granitic rocks or both, by dating detrital grains with laser-ablation split-stream mass spectrometry (LASS-ICP-MS).
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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