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High Fe contents in presolar silicate grains:
Primary feature or the result of secondary
processing?
Floss C., Stadermann F. J., Nguyen A., Zinner E.,
and Lea A. S. (2005) Meteorit. Planet. Sci.
40, A49.
ABSTRACT
Silicate grains are the newest addition to the collection
of presolar minerals found in extraterrestrial materials.
However, although close to a hundred presolar silicate
grains have been found to date, little information exists
about the mineralogy and/or elemental compositions of most
of them. Such knowledge is crucial for understanding the
stellar environments in which these grains formed. Auger
spectroscopy is unique in its ability to provide
compositional information on a spatial scale of 10s of
nanometers without requiring difficult sample preparation.
It is, thus, the ideal analytical technique for determining
the elemental compositions of presolar silicate grains,
which are typically less than half a micron in size.
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