A new calcium sulfate hemi-hydrate

Calcium sulfate hydrates receive significant attention due to numerous large scale industrial applications. There has been a long debate on the possible existence of two gypsum hemi-hydrate polymorphs, denoted alpha- and beta-CaSO(4).0.5H(2)O. In this work, a new crystal structure of calcium sulfate hemi-hydrates is presented, denoted beta-CaSO(4).0.5H(2)O. The structure was solved using powder neutron diffraction data, the space group is P3(1) and the unit cell in a hexagonal setting a = 6.9268(1), c = 12.7565(3) A. The structure has two calcium-oxygen coordination polyhedra: Ca1 is eight coordinated and has Ca-O bond lengths in the range 2.31(3) to 2.89(2) A and Ca2 is nine coordinated an…