sulfide mineral

sulfide mineral

 or sulphide mineral

Pyrite from Butte, Mont.

(credit: Courtesy of Joseph and Helen Guetterman Collection; photograph, John H. Gerard)

Any member of a group of compounds of sulfur with one or more metals. The metals that occur most commonly are iron, copper, nickel, lead, cobalt, silver, and zinc. They are the ore minerals of most metals used by industry (e.g., antimony, bismuth, copper, lead, nickel, and zinc). Other industrially important metals such as cadmium and selenium occur in trace amounts in numerous common sulfides and are recovered in refining processes.

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sulfide mineral [′səl‚fīd ‚min·rəl]

(mineralogy)

A mineral compound characterized by the linkage of sulfur with a metal or semimetal.