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Calcium silicate hydrates (C-S-H), the main components of hydrated cement, are known for being responsible of its cohesion. In this respect, they act as "glue" for the other solid components of mortar or concrete and thus strongly influence the mechanical properties of the outcoming material. Given the scarce knowledge about the influence of polymers on the growth and nucleation of C-S-H, this work focuses on the investigation of ongoing processes in the pre- and postnucleation stage of C-S-H precipitation. With the help of titration in combination with ion selective electrodes, effects of additives on the formation of C-S-H can be monitored and quantified resulting in new insights into the C-S-H formation in the presence of additives. Thus, this work can be regarded as a step towards a facilitated design of tailor-made C-S-H, which might result in superior cementitious materials on the long term., Comment: preprint (33 pages, 7 figures) and supp. info (32 pages, 51 figures, 4 tables)

Inspired by chains of ferrimagnetic nanocrystals (NCs) in magnetotactic bacteria (MTB), the synthesis and detailed characterization of ferrimagnetic magnetite NC chain-like assemblies is reported. An easy green synthesis route in a thermoreversible gelatin hydrogel matrix is used. The structure of these magnetite chains prepared with and without gelatin is characterized by means of transmission electron microscopy, including electron tomography (ET). These structures indeed bear resemblance to the magnetite assemblies found in MTB, known for their mechanical flexibility and outstanding magnetic properties and known to crystallographically align their magnetite NCs along the strongest <111> magnetization easy axis. Using electron holography (EH) and angular dependent magnetic measurements, the magnetic interaction between the NCs and the generation of a magnetically anisotropic material can be shown. The electro- and magnetostatic modeling demonstrates that in order to precisely determine the magnetization (by means of EH) inside chain-like NCs assemblies, their exact shape, arrangement and stray-fields have to be considered (ideally obtained using ET).

A fundamental quantity in multiple scattering is the transport mean free path the inverse of which describes the scattering strength of a sample. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of an appropriate description of the effective refractive index $n_{\mathrm{eff}}$ in multiple light scattering to accurately describe the light transport in dense photonic glasses. Using $n_{\mathrm{eff}}$ as calculated by the energy-density coherent potential approximation we are able to predict the transport mean free path of monodisperse photonic glasses. This model without any fit parameter is in qualitative agreement with numerical simulations and in fair quantitative agreement with spectrally resolved coherent backscattering measurements on new specially synthesized polystyrene photonic glasses. These materials exhibit resonant light scattering perturbed by strong near-field coupling, all captured within the model. Our model might be used to maximize the scattering strength of high index photonic glasses, which are a key in the search for Anderson localization of light in three dimensions., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures