Effects of curing temperature on the compressive strength and microstructure of copper tailing-based geopolymers

This study sought to analyze the effect of curing temperature on mechanical strength and microstructure of a copper tailing-based geopolymer via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), HCl extraction, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The distribution of gel formed in geopolymers tended to be uniform with increasing curing temperature from 25 to 80 °C. Moreover, the percentage of Si sites in C-S-H and N-A-S-H gels increased from 62.08% to 78.94% and more tetrahedral [AlO₄] was incorporated into the tetrahedron [SiO₄] backbone, leading to an increase of compressive strength from 10.2 to 39.6 MPa. When the curing temperature was increased to 120 °C, the percentage of Si sites in C-S-H and N-A-S-H gel decreased to 69.52%, and the compressive strength decreased to 27.5 MPa. Moderately elevated curing temperature promoted the dissolution of aluminosilicate while curing temperatures above 80 °C hindered it. Excessive curing temperature led to a decrease in the geopolymer alkaline medium.