NMR studies of water diffusion and relaxation in hydrating slag-based construction materials.

The NMR relaxation properties of hydrating blast-furnace slag cements have recently been shown to be dominated by the effect of water self-diffusion in internal magnetic field gradients in the pastes. While this was suggested on the basis of NMR relaxometry and magnetic susceptibility data, we report here the results from first direct studies of the water self-diffusion in the hydrating paste using a specialized PFG sequence and very intensive magnetic field gradient pulses.