Large SEM-BSE images of hydrated alite-belite mixtures at the ages of 7, 14, 28 and 56 days

This dataset contains a set of images of alite (C₃S) and belite (C₂S) mixtures (3:1, 1:1, 1:3 in weight).

Specimen preparation

The powders were mixed before adding water. The water to solid ratio used was 0.5. The specimens were filled in small containers and were allowed to hydrate under a saturated Ca(OH)₂ solution for 7, 14, 28 and 56 days.

The hydration of the specimens was stopped by immersing them in isopropanol and the specimens were dried at 60 °C. The dry specimens were embedded in epoxy resin, polished and coated with carbon to reduce charging. On some images small carbon fibers can be seen on top of the surface.

The images were acquired using a backscatter detector in a Helios G4 UX SEM by Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Available data

All images depict an area of ~1.5 x 1.5 mm² at a resolution of ~36000 x 36000 pixels. The pixel scaling is 42.1550 nm/px. This scaling is embedded in the stitched .tif files to be readable by ImageJ/Fiji. For a few specimens two images are available.

• 3:1: 7, 14, 28, 2x 56 d
• 1:1: 7, 2x 14, 28, 56 d
• 1:3: 7, 14, 28, 56 d

dataset_overview.pdf shows all available datasets with a preview image and thumbnails.7z contains thumbnails as .jpg with a resloution of 2000 x 2000 px.

Naming scheme

• x: C₃S proportion
• y: C₂S proportion
• z: specimen age in days

Files named in the format "Layer-C3S-C2S_x-y_zzd_stitched_tif.7z" contain the stitched file, while files named as "C3S-C2S_x-y_zzd_raw_tiles.7z" contain the raw unstitched tile set with an overlap of ~10%. The tiles also contain metadata from the SEM in an XML format describing the settings used for acquisition in detail. These metadata can be easily read using a text editor like Notepad++ by opening the tif files and navigating to the end of the file.

The tiles are arranged in a 10x10 grid. The filename indicates the position of the Tile. For example, "Tile_005-008-000000_0-000.s0001_e00.tif" is in the fifth row and the eigth column. The indices are counted from 1 to 10.

Internal note

These files are included in the following MAPS datasets:

• 2023_07_18 C3S 7d, C2S 1d, 7d, 3C3S-1C2S 7d
• 2023_07_19 C3S-C2S Mix 7,14d
• 2023_10_02 C3S-C2S Mix 21-28d
• 2023_10_04 C3S-C2S Mix 56d
• 2023_10_05 C3S-C2S 1-1 56d + C2S 14d