'To prove the discovery of a new mineral, it is necessary to obtain data on its crystal structure,' explains Viktor Grokhovsky, UrFU professor. 'Since the size of uakitite is very small, about 1-5 microns, it was impossible to solve this problem by the traditional method of X-ray analysis. The structure was studied on the equipment of UrFU scientific and educational center "Nanomaterials and Nanotechnologies" using electron diffraction.'
Professor Grokhovsky adds that the mineral consists of vanadium nitride and is already registered. The participants of the Annual Meeting of Meteoritic Society were the first to hear about this discovery.
The abstract of the report was published in proceedings of the 81st Annual Meeting of The Meteoritical Society 2018: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2018/pdf/6252.pdf
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