This sort of idea is far from new. Many authors have speculated that minerals can have acted as "templates" for the assembly of pre-biotic and early life chemicals. One common suggestion is that layered clay minerals could have stabilised the assembly of spiral chains of amino acids, allowing the first RNA to be produced.
Brief references to this idea are here

Combined with the observation that the most primitive organisms seem to live in extreme environments - hot, chemically active, high pressure etc, a chemical/mineralogical link in early life is quite likely.

One very interesting thing you need to be aware of is Phillipa Uwins' work on "nannobes" which appear to be self-replicating assemblages of organic materials but might not actually be "alive" in the conventional sense. These are really weird and very interesting.
Brief Summary of Phillipa's work