Neutron diffraction study of molten calcium aluminates

We use the aerodynamic levitation technique combined with CO2 laser heating to study the structure of liquid calcium aluminates using neutron diffraction. We determine the structure factors and corresponding pair correlation functions describing the short-range order in the liquids above the melting points. The combination of the experiments with ab initio molecular dynamics simulations makes possible to get a detailed description of the liquid structure. We find that ordered tetrahedral sites around the Al atoms become more prevalent with increasing CaO concentration, while the Ca atoms present highly distorted environments at all compositions studied.