Understanding the differences in surface properties between aegirite and specularite is of great significance to study their separation. In this work, the surface properties of aegirite and specularite, as well as their relationships to floatability, have been explored by first principle calculation, flotation, and Zeta potential measurement. The surface relaxation indicated that the specularite (001) surface appeared to show more surface reconstruction. The unsatisfied bond properties, Mulliken bond population, and surface charge showed that the floatability of specularite was superior to that of aegirite. The flotation results showed that the hydrophobicity of specularite was higher than that of aegirite with dodecylamine (DDA) as the collector. It is infeasible to separate specularite from aegirite by flotation using starch as the depressant, and research of effective reagents with high affinity to the element Si is the subclinical breakthrough point of specularite/aegirite separation.Minerals 2019, 9, 782 2 of 15 flotation with amines. They also found that starch was not a selective depressant for magnetite in the process of the reverse cationic flotation of iron ores when iron-containing silicates as amphiboles are present in the flotation system [8]. Carboxymethyl cellulose, an effective depressant for iron oxide, was also found to be a depressant for chlorite [14].The novel high-efficiency depressants or collectors are considered to be an effective method to solve the unsatisfactory separation problems [15,16]. These depressants and collectors are targeted for making a sufficient hydrophilic and hydrophobic state of the mineral and gangue surface, respectively. Therefore, they are profoundly inseparable from understanding the surface properties of the minerals in the novel depressant or collector molecule design and their adsorption mechanism on the mineral surface.In recent years, with the rapid developments of theoretical and computational chemistry, a density functional theory (DFT) calculation can be adopted to visually investigate the surface properties and floatability of minerals and to predict possible novel reagents [4,17]. The wettability of the mineral surface and its regulation have always been the core issues of the flotation process [18][19][20]. Thus, further research of the nature of the cleavage surface, especially of the main cleavage surface, is of great significance for investigating the floatability of the minerals. For example, Han et al. [21] calculated the surface properties of the hemimorphite (110) surface and the simthsointe (101) surface by the first-principle calculation method to investigate their relationships to the mineral floatability, which implied that hemimorphite (110) surface is more readily wetted by water, while the O atoms on hemimorphite (110) surface are more impeding of collector molecules. He et al. [22] calculated the properties of spodumene and revealed that the O atoms in spodumene are the most active, while the Li atoms are inactive, so an activator is nece...