A TEM investigation of natural metamict zircons: structure and recovery of amorphous domains

The nature of the amorphous regions and their recovery processes in two natural metamict zircon samples from Sri Lanka have been studied by high resolution and analytical transmission electron microscopy. Samples untreated and annealed at different temperatures were investigated. Nanoprobe analyses on untreated samples and samples annealed at 1000 K show that within experimental uncertainties, no chemical segregation occurred. In samples annealed at higher temperatures (≥1100 K) recovery occurs in a two-stage process and leads to different microstructures, which depended on the initial amount of metamictization. In highly amorphized samples, recrystallization starts at 1200 K. Randomly oriented ZrO₂ grains embedded in a silica-rich matrix are detected. At higher temperature (16 h at 1600 K), the assemblage transforms into a polygonal texture of small zircon grains. Some untransformed zirconia grains and pockets of silica-rich glass are still present, however. In partially metamict samples, recovery starts at 1100 K. The small surviving oriented zircon domains grow at the expense of the surrounding amorphous material. At 1200 K, new zirconia grains nucleate with random orientations. After 1 h annealing at 1400 K, the zircon structure is restored and the microstructure coarse-grained. The proportion of crystalline zirconia and silica-rich glass has dramatically decreased. Received: 15 November 1999 / Accepted: 1 March 2000