Interlayer potassium and its surrounding in micas: Crystal chemical modeling and XANES spectroscopy

The aim of this work is to provide a detailed description of the interlayer site in trioctahedral true micas by combining crystal-chemical and spectroscopic evidence. Insights obtained are based on a statistical appraisal of crystal-chemical, structural and spectroscopic data determined on two sets of trioctahedral micas extensively studied by both X-ray diffraction refinement on single crystals (SC-XRD) and X-ray absorption fine spectroscopy (XAFS) at the potassium K-edge. Spectroscopy was carried out on both random powders and oriented cleavage flakes, the latter setting taking advantage of the polarized character of synchrotron radiation. Such an approach (AXANES) is shown to be complementary to crystal-chemical investigation based on SC-XRD refinement. However, the results are not definitive as they focus on few samples having extreme features only (e.g., end-members, unusual compositions, and samples with extreme and well-identified substitution mechanisms). The experimental absorption K-edge (XANES) for potassium was decomposed by calculation and extrapolated into a full in-plane absorption component (???) and a full out-of-plane absorption component (??). These two patterns reflect different structural features: