Nanomaterial accumulation in boiling brines enhances epithermal bonanzas Cano, Néstor González Jiménez, José María This work benefited from Grant NANOMET PID2022-138768OB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001133 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe” by the “European Union”, Grant IN 218323 funded by PAPIIT-DGAPA-UNAM, and Grant PID 2019-105625RB-C21 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. Additional funding was Granted by CONAHCyT (ongoing Ph.D. grant) and the Geological Society of America (Grant Number 13570-22) to the first author. Xavier Llovet, Laura Casado, Isabel Rivas, María del Mar Abad, and Cecilia de la Prada are acknowledged for their assistance during EPMA, FIB-SEM, and HRTEM analyses. We thank UNAM academicians Juan Tomás Vásquez and Edith Fuentes Guzmán for their help during sample preparation. We also thank Baltazar Chávez, Senén Benítez, and the team at Natividad (Oaxaca) for their assistance during the stay at the mine facilities. The manuscript has strongly benefited from insightful reviews by two anonymous reviewers and the handling Editor, Dr. Dan Zhu. Epithermal bonanza-type ores, characterized by weight-percent contents of e.g., gold and silver in a few mm to cm, are generated by mixtures of magmatic-derived hydrothermal brines and external fluids (e.g., meteoric) that transport a variety of metals to the site of deposition. However, the low solubilities of precious metals in hydrothermal fluids cannot justify the high concentrations necessary to produce such type of hyper-enriched metal ore. Here we show that boiling metal-bearing brines can produce, aggregate, and accumulate metal nanomaterials, ultimately leading to focused gold + silver ± copper over-enrichments. We found direct nano-scale evidence of nanoparticulate gold- and/or silver-bearing ores formed via nonclassical growth (i.e., nanomaterial attachment) during boiling in an intermediate-sulfidation epithermal bonanza. The documented processes may explain the generation of bonanzas in metal-rich brines from a range of mineral deposit types. 2023-10-16T09:10:32Z 2023-10-16T09:10:32Z 2023-09-11 journal article Cano, N., González-Jiménez, J.M., Camprubí, A. et al. Nanomaterial accumulation in boiling brines enhances epithermal bonanzas. Sci Rep 13, 14985 (2023). [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41756-4] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85004 10.1038/s41598-023-41756-4 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Springer Nature