Morphogenesis of cement hydrate

Abstract

As the most widely used synthetic material on the planet, concrete poses a serious societal concern regarding its significant environmental footprint.

High calcium cementless fly ash binder with low environmental footprint: Optimum Taguchi design

“…The formation of calcite induced the bands at 1380‐1490 cm −1 , arising from the asymmetric stretching of CO 3 2− and also, the weak shoulder at 875 cm −1 due to the out‐of‐plane bending of CO 3 2− . The bending vibration and the stretching vibration of molecular H 2 O appear at 1640 cm −1 and at 3200‐3600 cm −1 , respectively . Overall, the FT–IR spectra further support the formation of major reaction products revealed by the XRD patterns.…”

“…This not only underlies the significant environmental footprint, contributing to 5%‐10% of the global carbon dioxide emissions but also renders itself the most energy intensive of manufacturing industries . Consequently, there are active research efforts directed towards enhancing the mechanical durability of concretes via bottom‐up engineering, which can ultimately reduce the production of portland cement . In addition, a plethora of research efforts has been devoted to developing an alternative binder using industrial waste encompassing blast‐furnace slag, rice husk, and fly ash .…”

Bioinspired Cementitious Materials: Main Strategies, Progress, and Applications

“…Structural, compositional and morphological properties of C-S-H can now be engineered and optimized for the subsequent assembling process, which would ultimately lead to enhanced mechanical properties at macroscale. Synthetic C-S-H can be produced via several routes including slurry-phase reaction between calcium oxide and silica, mechanochemical synthesis using a vibration mill and solution-based synthesis between calcium nitrate and sodium silicate (Sasaki et al, 2005;Foley et al, 2012;Mogghaddam et al, 2017).…”

“…Mogghadam et al employed a seed-mediated, surfactant-assisted approach to attain specific, well-defined morphology for C-S-H (Mogghaddam et al, 2017). The authors employed naturally formed calcite particles in aqueous solution as basic seeds, thereby prompting heterogenous nucleation and growth of C-S-H on top of them.…”

Merger of Energetic Affinity and Optimal Geometry Provides New Class of Boron Nitride Based Sorbents with Unprecedented Hydrogen Storage Capacity

“…It is known that physical properties such as mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of 2D materials (e.g., BN sheets) are affected by ripples . For instance, in the case of mechanical properties, the ripples provide high toughness (due to extra stretch as a result of unfolding of the ripples) while the ultimate strength is not sacrificed; two properties that are conflicting (i.e., high toughness and high strength) . Thus, having these sheets slightly crumpled can increase their toughness to be more flexible (stretchable) to internal pressure or external loads, thereby increasing their safety due to impact, damage, etc, which is one of the major concerns for safe H 2 storage and transport.…”