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Material World
Mineral · PbMoO4

Wulfenite

Lead molybdate, in thin orange tablets — a minor ore of molybdenum and a mineral collected almost entirely for how it looks.

Ore Collectible specimen

Wulfenite is a lead molybdate that crystallises as thin square tablets, typically a translucent orange or yellow, in the oxidised upper parts of lead deposits. It is one of the minerals people collect on sight, and the specimens from the American southwest are as well known as any in the hobby.

Industrially it is marginal. It is a source of molybdenum where it occurs in quantity, but the element comes overwhelmingly from molybdenite and from the flue dusts of copper porphyry roasting, which is also where rhenium is recovered.

How to identify it

Thin square or bevelled tablets, orange to yellow, with an adamantine lustre and a white streak — the pale streak against a strongly coloured mineral is the useful check. Heavy and soft, like most secondary lead minerals.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

is an ore of

  • Molybdenum — element · a minor ore; molybdenite and copper porphyry roasting supply the rest Wikidata
  • Lead — element · as with vanadinite, a secondary mineral of the oxidised zone above a lead deposit Wikidata

is a component of

  • Oxidised zone — deposit type · the yellow lead molybdate, from the same setting and for the same reason

contains

Sources

  • Material World
    Our own writing
  • Wikidata
    Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
  • Crystallography Open Database
    COD Advisory Board / Vilnius University · CC0 — contributors place data in the public domain

Questions this page answers

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Wulfenite back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Downstream — what it becomes

  • Wulfenite → is an ore of (a minor ore; molybdenite and copper porphyry roasting supply the rest) → Molybdenum → is a source for (recovered from the flue dusts of molybdenum roasting; rhenium forms no ore of its own) → Rhenium → is a component of (two or three per cent, and essentially the only use rhenium has — most of world consumption goes into turbine blades) → Nickel superalloy → is used in (cast as a single crystal, because at temperature and sustained load the failure mode is creep along grain boundaries — so the boundaries are removed entirely) → Turbine blade → is associated with (the jet engine created the superalloy industry, because no existing material survived the turbine inlet — and turbine temperature has risen about 500 °C since, almost entirely on the blade) → The wartime materials programmes complete chain
  • Wulfenite → is an ore of (as with vanadinite, a secondary mineral of the oxidised zone above a lead deposit) → Lead → is a source for (most silver reaches the market as a by-product of lead mining rather than from silver mines, recovered from the refinery's residues) → Silver → is a component of (a few per cent in the lead-free alloys, which measurably raised world silver demand when the transition happened) → Solder → is used in (and the move away from tin-lead under RoHS from 2006 is the most visible material change the industry has made) → Electronics manufacture → is associated with (and the supply chain it produced is the deepest and most concentrated in the world economy) → The semiconductor era complete chain
  • Wulfenite → is a component of (the yellow lead molybdate, from the same setting and for the same reason) → Oxidised zone
  • Wulfenite → is an ore of (as with vanadinite, a secondary mineral of the oxidised zone above a lead deposit) → Lead → is associated with (lead was smelted alongside copper from the earliest metallurgy) → Bronze Age complete chain
  • Wulfenite → is an ore of (as with vanadinite, a secondary mineral of the oxidised zone above a lead deposit) → Lead → is a source for (and from lead smelting, by the same route) → Thallium → is used as (thallium-201 as a cardiac imaging tracer) → Medical imaging
  • Wulfenite → is an ore of (a minor ore; molybdenite and copper porphyry roasting supply the rest) → Molybdenum → is used as (raises the temperature at which steel loses strength) → Alloying

These are the most distinct paths onward. Wulfenite ends up in others besides.