evaluation of zirconium-bearing minerals for geochronology using micro X-ray fluorescence.

In this contribution we present a method for pre-screening geological materials for zircon prior to submitting samples for heavy mineral separation. The proposed workflow utilizes micro X-ray fluorescence to identify zirconium-bearing pixels in slabbed rock samples. The open-source image analysis software ImageJ™ is applied to the micro X-ray fluorescence elemental map to determine the abundance and spatial distribution of zirconium-bearing pixels in the scanned surface area.