Can plain concrete cement be used for a ground floor slab?

Yes, but it’s going to get pretty thick if you don’t want cracks.

On most soil, you can get away with about 8″ thick. It will need to be nearly a perfect rectangle no length longer than about 100′and the short span must never get less than half the long length.

If you get outside of these proportions you need to increase the thickness rapidly. A longer slab will break up due to ground friction as it cures, so it needs to be thick enough to counter that. If any portion is narrower than others it needs to be thick enough to deal with that concentration of stresses.

You can end up with a three-foot thick slab on a seemingly normal-sized house fairly quickly.

Or, you use a 4″ slab with reinforcement that handles almost all typical situations with 6″ slabs handling virtually all reasonable heavy use situations.