CO2-fluxing collapses metal mobility in magmatic vapour

Magmatic systems host many types of ore deposits, including world-class deposits of copper and gold. Magmas are commonly an important source of metals and ore-forming fluids in these systems. In many magmatic-hydrothermal systems, low-density aqueous fluids, or vapours, are significant metal carriers. Such vapours are water-dominated shallowly, but fluxing of CO2-rich vapour exsolved from deeper magma is now recognised as ubiquitous during open-system magma degassing. Furthermore, we show that such CO2-fluxing leads to a sharp drop in element solubility, up to a factor of 10,000 for Cu, and thereby provides a highly efficient, but as yet unrecognised mechanism for metal deposition.