Redetermination of ruizite, Ca2Mn3+2[Si4O11(OH)2](OH)2·2H2O
The crystal structure of ruizite, ideally Ca2Mn3+2[Si4O11(OH)2](OH)2·2H2O [dicalcium dimanganese(III) tetrasilicate tetrahydroxide dihydrate] was first determined in space groupA2 with an isotropic displacement parameter model (R= 5.6%) [Hawthorne (1984).Tschermaks Mineral. Petrogr. Mitt.33, 135–146]. A subsequent refinement in space groupC2/mwith anisotropic displacement parameters for non-H atoms converged withR= 8.4% [Mooreet al.(1985).Am. Mineral.70, 171–181]. The current study reports a redetermination of the ruizite structure by means of single-crystal X-ray diffraction data of a natural sample from the Wessels mine, Kalahari Manganese Field, Northern Cape Province, South Africa. Our data (R1= 3.0%) confirm that the space group of ruizite is that of the first study rather thanC2/m. This work improves upon the structure reported by Hawthorne (1984) in that all non-H atoms were refined with anisotropic displacement parameters and all hydrogen atoms were located. The crystal structure consists of [010] chains of edge-sharing MnO6octahedra flanked by finite [Si4O11(OH)2] chains. The Ca2+cations are situated in the cavities of this arrangement and exhibit a coordination number of seven.