Growing Mechanism of Polysulfides and Elemental Sulfur Formation: Implications to Hindered Chalcopyrite Dissolution.

Metal-deficient polysulfides have been argued for a long time to be responsible for the low kinetics of chalcopyrite leaching to extract copper. It has been shown that chalcopyrite surfaces are the source of sulfur that is oxidized to form polysulfides and elemental sulfur. Electronic structure calculations were performed for HS ( = 0, 1, 2 and = 1.