2.3. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) Analysis

The chemical composition of the hydrated cubes prepared at curing times of 1, 3, 7, 28, and 70 days was tested using XRD. The cubes were ground into fine powder before the XRD analysis. The cement and hydrated cement powder were loaded onto standard holders. The test was performed on a Panalytical X’Pert Pro diffractometer equipped with a Cu X-ray source, operating under the following conditions: 40 kV, 45 mA, temperature of 25 °C, step size of 0.0130° 2θ, range of 5.0036–80.9756° 2θ, scan time of 164 s, and continuous scan mode.

The crystalline mineral phases were identified with software X’pert HighScore Plus (PANalytical, NL) using reference patterns from the Crystallography Open Database. Additionally, quantitative analysis was done by applying the Rietveld refinement method to the recorded diffraction patterns. The peak background was removed with 5 bending factors and 10 granularities. The standard deviation is 1% based on the results from the three samples. The additional information for the phases used in the quantitative Rietveld analyses is provided in Table 5.