A synthetic compound Ca4Al6SO16 (usually abbreviated as C4A3S) obtained by mixing CaO, A12O3 and CaSO4 powders and finally sintered at 1380°C is a cement with excellent hydraulicity and greatly expanding in application. It is hydralysed rapidly by water to form predominatly calcium aluminate hydrates and therefore unlikly to occur naturally, although structurally it may be regarded as an end member of the sodalite-hauynite series of naturally occuring minerals. C4A3S has a cubic structure with ao=9.19Å and space group . Fig.1 is the projection viewed down axis, in which there are two sets of 8C position in , namely CaI and CaII, occupied by the calcium atoms, respectively, and the ratio of occupations in these two sets of positions is about 3:1. This suggests that the calcium atoms can freely occupy these sites in various degrees and usually they almost locates on the CaI positions. A through-focus series of the lattice images were found in good agreement with the simulated ones. Each bright spot in the image taken at Scherzer defocus correspounds to a colunm of sulphur atom in the structural model (Fig.1).
