Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Professor Li Rongen wasn’t the only one that received an invitation.
Old Tang and Academician Lu also received one.
Once Lu Zhou sent out these three invitations, he suddenly found out that his worries were unnecessary.
His parents and Xiao Tong, his three professors from Jin Ling University, his five students, and Chen Yushan… It seemed like he had almost used up all of his invitations?
Lu Zhou spent a while thinking about the remaining two invitations, but he couldn’t come up with an idea.
Professor Deligne would be attending the European Mathematical Society in France with Professor Fefferman.
As for Witten…
He might be interested in attending the Nobel Prize dinner, but unfortunately, he would be at CERN to participate in a very important international theoretical physics conference, so he didn’t have time.
It seemed that everyone would be pretty busy during the few weeks before Christmas.
As for inviting his previous roommates…
There weren’t enough spots left, and he didn’t want to leave anyone out.
Lu Zhou couldn’t come up with a good idea, so he decided to leave this issue aside.
I guess I just won’t invite anyone else. It’s not like I have to invite 14 people.
He had more important things to do.
Like finding a suitable method for the industrial manufacturing of SG-1…
The samples in experiments were created using a chemical vapor deposition method on a high-temperature carbon substrate. After that, the substrate was dissolved to obtain graphene.
However, this wasn’t enough as this process only yielded the basic graphene material. In order to enable it to achieve superconductivity at 101K, it needed to be subjected to a series of processes, such as N doping.
Actually, these things should be figured out by the market. However, Lu Zhou didn’t want to wait that long.
When engineers like Professor Lazerson finally opened up their minds and saw the value in this industry that had small profits but no competitors, it would be way past Lu Zhou’s mission deadline.
For now, the most popular use of superconducting materials was for scientific research.
Fortunately, Lu Zhou had read some industrial design books in his free time, and he went to a few engineering lectures. Combined that with his engineering knowledge which was at Level 2, it wasn’t difficult for him to absorb new knowledge.
He might not be able to design a production line from start to finish, but he could improve the laboratory preparation method and find a lower cost synthesis method.
Worst case scenario, he would just use the laboratory preparation method.
It would just cost a bit of money.
If he really created a DEMO fusion reactor, he wouldn’t ever have to worry about money.
For that, he would be willing to burn a hundred million dollars… or even a billion.
It was almost the end of the month when Professor Chirik got on a plane to Boston and headed to the MRS Autumn Conference.
As for Lu Zhou, other than his SG-1 material experiments, he had been preparing for his seminar which would begin after the Nobel Prize award ceremony.
Interestingly, he had received a lot of invitations to accept awards.
The most famous one among them was the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. Apparently, it was sponsored by a Russian billionaire and the founders of Google, Facebook, Tencent, and other companies. There were also some less famous awards, ones that couldn’t even be found online.
After all, Lu Zhou was the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and both his age and achievements were something worth paying attention to.
Bragg first set the record when he was 25 years old. It took a century for the record to be beaten by one year. Who knew how many centuries it would take for it to be beaten again.
Lu Zhou didn’t mind receiving a few extra awards, but there were so many invitations piled up in his mailbox that it gave him a headache.
It seemed that winning a Nobel Prize really increased his popularity.
After flying to Stockholm, he still had to fly to Paris. Lu Zhou really didn’t have that much time to fly around the world. In the end, he decided to let Xiao Ai get rid of the invitations that weren’t relevant to academia.
However, Lu Zhou later learned that the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics was worth US$3 million…
He couldn’t help but feel heartbroken to have lost US$3 million.
Although US$3 million wasn’t a lot of money for him, but still, who didn’t want more money?
Furthermore, this was free money.
However, since he had already refused the invitation, he couldn’t do anything about it anymore.
…
On the last day of November, Lu Zhou applied for a long vacation away from Princeton to prepare for his to Stockholm.
Around the same time, a piece of good news came from Professor Chirik, who was at the MRS Autumn Conference in Boston.
Professor Chirik spoke excitedly through the phone.
“The report went very smoothly and the seats and aisles were completely full! You should have seen it in person!”
When Lu Zhou heard Professor Chirik’s energetic voice, he couldn’t help but smirk.
When he reported at the MRS conference on the modified PDMS, the aisles were also full of people.
He felt nostalgic just thinking about this.
Lu Zhou began to talk about the important part.
“Are there any companies that are interested in our technology?”
Chirik: “There is, but… it might not be what you expected.”
Lu Zhou: “What do you mean?”
Chirik: “IBM wants us, and they’re very interested in our technology. However, it’s not because of the superconductivity but because of the semiconductor properties exhibited by the Mott insulator at a particular angle.”
A light bulb went off in Lu Zhou’s brain.
“They plan on using the SG-1 material in electronics?”
Professor Chirik nodded and said, “Seems like it. They’re doing research on carbon-based electronic devices. However, they only asked about some technical details and if we needed funding. I told them we don’t, so they left without saying anything else.”
Chirik sounded a bit disappointed.
When the IBM representative talked to him, he thought they wanted to pay for a license. Unfortunately, they didn’t do that.
Obviously, they had doubts about whether or not this material could actually be used on electronic devices. They needed to verify it by doing experiments in their own laboratory.
As for the superconducting material itself, some medical device companies that were involved in superconducting materials production expressed interest in this technology.
Lu Zhou noticed that his partner seemed to be a little upset, so he said, “There’s nothing to be upset about. The field of superconducting materials isn’t popular, so it’s normal if the market isn’t interested.”
“I know… I just feel as if this great technology isn’t being recognized by the industry…” Professor Chirik didn’t know how to describe this feeling, so he merely shrugged and said, “It’s just a little unfortunate.”
Lu Zhou: “Not being recognized by the industry doesn’t hinder the greatness of a piece of technology. Also, I can promise you that this technology will be used in a great project.”
Chirik: “Like?”
Lu Zhou coughed and said, “I can’t tell you now, but you’ll know what I’m talking about by 2025.”
Professor Chirik said, “Okay then, it seems like I’ll have to wait 7 years for the mystery to reveal itself.”
