Investigation of ion transport in hardened cement paste by LA‐ICP‐MS

This study examined the impact of two different transport mechanisms and water/cement (w/c) ratios on the ingress depth of damaging ions into hardened cement paste (hcp). In addition, the effect of sample preparation, i.e. drying before and after exposure, is considered within this study. We applied Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA‐ICP‐MS) as an analytical method to determine the ion ingress depth. The results show that post‐drying of the samples (after exposure) significantly affects the ion ingress depth in hcp as determined by LA‐ICP‐MS. Our results confirmed, as previous studies, that ions ingress the hcp faster due to capillary suction than diffusion. This work shows that although LA‐ICP‐MS is not commonly applied in the analysis of construction material, it has a vast potential to examine the profile ingress of damaging ions.