PhD Studentship: Elvan dykes as sources, fluid pathways and traps of Sn, W, Cu and Li in SW England. TARGET NERC Centre for Doctoral Training PhD studentship 2025/26 Entry

TARGET is the Training and Research Group for Energy Transition Mineral Resources, a UKRI NERC sponsored Centre for Doctoral Training.

TARGET will support interdisciplinary researchers through a comprehensive training programme to develop your skills in various aspects of meeting mineral resources challenge. Your training will prepare you for a career at the forefront of mineral resources and the energy transition, whether your future is in academia, industry, or policy.

Project Information

Project Highlights: 

• Field-, core shed- and laboratory-based project on granite dyke magmatism and related mineralisation in SW England. 
• Aims to constrain the timing and process relations between the emplacement of granite plutons, elvan dykes, mantle-derived lamprophyre dykes, upper crustal faulting and Sn, W, Cu and Li mineralisation. 
• Will enhance exploration models for granite-related Sn, W, Cu and Li mineralisation in SW England, with potential applications worldwide, and develop student exploration skills and employability.

Overview: 

The UK government’s target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will require huge quantities of ‘critical’ raw materials including Sn, W and Li, plus Cu (non-critical), for green technology, e.g., batteries for electric vehicles. The Cornubian Batholith and associated world-class ore field has a long history of Sn, Cu and W extraction and hosts the largest Li resource in Europe. There is active exploration ± development for these metals (Cornish Lithium, Cornish Metals, Cornish Tin, Cornwall Resources, Imerys British Lithium) and in every area there are microgranite or porphyry dykes, known locally as ‘elvans’. 

The elvans have strike-lengths up to 10 km and widths up to c. 50 m, and have a spatial association with fault-controlled magmatic-hydrothermal lode mineralisation, which can be younger, older or synchronous. Whilst there has been little recent published research on the elvans (e.g., Antipin et al., 2002), there has been considerable new work on the Cornubian Batholith (e.g. Simons et al., 2017), processes affecting Li enrichment in micas (Putzolu et al., 2024), and the U-Pb cassiterite dating method (e.g. Tapster and Bright, 2020). 

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