Hydration water and microstructure in calcium silicate and aluminate hydrates

Understanding the state of the hydration water and the microstructure development in a cement paste is likely to be the key for the improvement of its ultimate strength and durability. In order to distinguish and characterize the reacted and unreacted water, the single-particle dynamics of water molecules in hydrated calcium silicates (C3S, C2S) and aluminates (C3A, C4AF) were studied by quasi-elastic neutron scattering, QENS. The time evolution of the immobile fraction represents the hydration kinetics and the mobile fraction follows a non-Debye relaxation. Less sophisticated, but more accessible and cheaper techniques, like differential scanning calorimetry, DSC, and near-infrared spectroscopy, NIR, were validated through QENS results and they allow one to easily and quantitatively follow the cement hydration kinetics and can be widely applied on a laboratory scale to understand the effect of additives (i.e., superplasticizers, cellulosic derivatives, etc) on the thermodynamics of the hydration process. DSC provides information on the free water index and on the activation energy involved in the hydration process while the NIR band at 7000?cm?1 monitors, at a molecular level, the increase of the surface-interacting water. We report as an example the effect of two classes of additives widely used in the cement industry: superplasticizers, SPs, and cellulose derivatives. SPs interact at the solid surface, leading to a consistent increment of the activation energy for the processes of nucleation and growth of the hydrated phases. In contrast, the cellulosic additives do not affect the nucleation and growth activation energy, but cause a significant increment in the water availability: in other words the hydration process is more efficient without any modification of the solid/liquid interaction, as also evidenced by the 1H-NMR. Additional information is obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), ultra small angle neutron scattering (USANS) and wide angle x-ray scattering (WAXD) that characterize how additives affect both the hydrated microstructure development and the original grain size. In particular, SPs alter the morphology of the hydrated phases, which no longer grow with the classic fibrillar structure on the grain surface, but nucleate in solution as globular structures. All this information converges in a quantitative, and at molecular level, description of the mechanisms involved in the setting process of one of the materials most widely used by human beings.