3.4. Mineralogy analysis
Samples for Mineralogy Liberation Analyser (MLA) analysis were mounted in epoxy resin and polished to give a high quality finish and then carbon coated. In the MLA measurement, extended BSE liberation analysis (XBSE) mode was used to obtain bulk modal mineralogy information. Mineral discrimination is based on BSE grey level contrast. XBSE implements area X-ray analysis to efficiently analyse ore samples containing phases with sufficient BSE contrast to ensure effective segmentation. Sparse phase liberation analysis (SPL) mode was used to obtain gold and silver minerals association information. SPL searches BSE images for particles containing phases of interest using a BSE grey scale range and then performs an XBSE analysis on them. It does not provide bulk mineralogy information, as only selected particles in the sample are analysed