Concrete and Cement Materials Research

Concrete is the most widely used construction material on Earth, yet producing its key ingredient, Portland cement, releases roughly eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a figure that has pushed researchers to rethink the chemistry of binding materials from the ground up. Much of the current work centers on geopolymers and alkali-activated materials, which replace conventional cement with industrial byproducts like fly ash, activated by alkaline solutions to form durable, low-carbon binders through fundamentally different reaction pathways. Understanding those pathways — how raw materials dissolve, reorganize, and harden at the molecular and nanoscale level — remains an open and technically demanding question, since the hydration and polycondensation mechanisms differ considerably from classical cement chemistry and are sensitive to feedstock variability. Alongside mechanistic questions, researchers are actively working to close the gap between laboratory performance and real-world deployment, addressing durability under diverse environmental conditions and the scalability of alternative binders within existing construction supply chains.

Works

128,247

Total citations

2,634,326

Keywords

GeopolymerCementitious MaterialsFly AshAlkali-Activated MaterialsSustainable ConcreteCarbon Emissions