The prospectivity of high purity quartz in Australia

<div>High Purity Silica (HPS) is the principal raw material in the production of silicon used to manufacture high technology products including semiconductors and solar cells. Quartz (SiO2) is the most abundant silica mineral in the Earth’s crust; however, economic deposits of high purity quartz (HPQ; SiO2 >99.995%) are rare. Rapid acceleration towards reaching net zero emissions has seen a parallel increase in demand for the discovery of new HPS deposits for downstream processing. As a part of the Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub, Geoscience Australia is addressing this demand by generating the first mineral systems model and accompanying national scale mineral potential map to help explorers accelerate discovery. Presentation for the 2024 AusIMM Critical Minerals Conference