A German group led by Professor U. Panne (Humboldt University, Berlin) has recently reported the successful application of the micro X-ray diffraction technique to the evaluation of the durability of cements against reaction with sodium sulfate. The experiments were done with a Debye-Scherrer camera equipped with a large-size CCD camera (3072×3072) and monochromatic micro beam (11.6 keV, 10 μm). By moving the sample along the X-ray path, it is possible to obtain information at different depths, and the team could therefore eventually reconstruct the profile of each crystalline phase along the depth from the surface. It was found that phase transformations proceeded during damage caused by penetration of sulfates. For more information, see the paper, "Deciphering the Sulfate Attack of Cementitious Materials by High-Resolution Micro-X-ray Diffraction", M. C. Schlegel et al., Anal. Chem., 83, 3744 (2011).
