Focussed ion beam nanotomography reveals the 3D morphology of different solid phases in hardened cement pastes

Due to the development of integrated low-keV back-scattered electron detectors, it has become possible in focussed ion beam nanotomography to segment not only solid matter and porosity of hardened cement paste, but also to distinguish different phases within the solid matter. This paper illustrates a method that combines two different approaches for improving the contrast between different phases in the solid matrix of a cement paste. The first approach is based on the application of a specially developed 3D diffusion filter. The second approach is based on a modified data-acquisition procedure during focussed ion beam nanotomography. A pair of electron images is acquired for each slice in the focussed ion beam nanotomography dataset. The first image is captured immediately after ion beam milling; the second image is taken after a prolonged exposure to electron beam scanning. The acquisition of complementary focussed ion beam nanotomography datasets and processing the images with a 3D anisotropic diffusion filter allows distinguishing different phases within the hydration products.