The mineral has a bright metallic luster, and is tin white or light steel gray in color with a black streak.

Notable occurrences include Cobalt, Ontario, Skuterud, Norway, and Franklin, New Jersey, in the United States.

The crystal structure of the skutterudite mineral was determined in 1928 by Oftedahl[7][8] to be cubic, belonging to space group Im-3 (number 204).

Six of these cubes are filled with (almost) square planar rings of As, each of which is oriented parallel to one of the unit cell edges.

Together with the unit cell size and the assigned space group, the aforementioned parameters fully describe the crystal structure of the material.