Published November 23, 2022 | Version v1
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The Atomic-Level Structure of Zinc-Modified Cementitious Calcium Silicate Hydrate

  • 1. Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Laboratory of Construction Materials, Institut des Matériaux, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 2. Laboratory of Construction Materials, Institut des Matériaux, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 3. Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 4. Institute for Building Materials, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland

Description

It has recently been demonstrated that the addition of zinc can enhance the mechanical strength of tri-calcium silicates (C3S) upon hydration, but the structure of the main hydration product of cement, calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H), in zinc-modified formulations remains unresolved. Here we combine 29Si DNP enhanced solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), density functional theory (DFT) based chemical shift computations and molecular dynamics (MD) modelling to determine the atomic-level structure of zinc-modified C-S-H. The structure contains two main new silicon species (Q(1,Zn) and Q(2p,Zn)) where zinc substitutes Q(1) silicon species in dimers and bridging Q(2b) silicon sites, respectively. Structures determined as a function of zinc content show that zinc promotes an increase in the dreierketten mean chain lengths.

The uploaded folder contains the pertinent CIF files, DFT files, raw NMR data files, raw XRD data files, and LAMMPS input files.

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