Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Lu Zhou left with the crowd after the meeting finished.
He was planning on walking to the laboratory building, but suddenly he heard someone called out his name.
“Professor Lu, long time no see.”
Lu Zhou turned around and saw Professor Li Rongen walking toward him with a smile.
Lu Zhou remembered that he had just poached two good soldiers from this professor, so he felt a little embarrassed. He smiled and greeted the professor, “Long time no see, how’s your health?”
“Everything is good except for my heart.” Professor Li looked at Lu Zhou and smiled as said, “I was finally able to cultivate two good students, but now you have poached them away.”
“This… How can you call it poaching…” Lu Zhou coughed and said, “Also you’ll definitely find better ones in the future…”
Professor Li shook his head and said, “Fine, I’m not here to complain, I’m happy that they found a good place to work at. Even though it is a shame that they didn’t do their PhDs, but they can still learn a lot from you.”
Professor Li was exaggerating. Just because they were his students didn’t mean they had to work for him. However, he did have plans for them to work at Zhongshan New Materials after their graduation.
However, the students made the right choice to go with Lu Zhou. Any student would make this their choice. This was why Li Rongen didn’t oppose his two students from going to Lu Zhou. In fact, he supported them.
It wasn’t like Professor Li’s research team would be heavily impacted due to the loss of two students.
The old man looked at Lu Zhou and said with a serious tone, “Honestly, I didn’t really understand your proof process during the meeting. Are you serious about the hollow carbon spheres?”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “I was completely serious.”
Among the carbon-sulfur composite materials, the hollow carbon spheres was a relatively new idea and had huge potential.
Also, thanks to various breakthroughs in carbon nanotechnology, the price of carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, and graphene materials were falling every year. However, there was a real application use in industrial production.
Professor Li stared at Lu Zhou for a long time. He then suddenly shook his head and said, “… That Sun Hongbiao guy is poisonous, but he is right, you really do have a plan.”
Lu Zhou smiled and humbly said, “I don’t really have a plan, I’m only 30% certain on this idea.”
Of course, this 30% was only the total chance of success; it wasn’t some kind of experiment success rate. Who knew how many experiments it would take…
After all, his estimations on hollow carbon spheres were based on inferences. Although he could use mathematical methods to prove the feasibility, it was really hard to find the actual hollow carbon sphere materials.
“A 30% chance of success is very high. Normally, our experiments have a rate of 10% chance of success,” said Professor Li as he looked at Lu Zhou. He then added, “Then, I will wait for your good news.”
Lu Zhou asked, “Is your research team not involved?”
Professor Li shook his head and smiled as he said, “You’re already in it, so what’s the point of me joining? I’ll just wait to read your thesis.”
Zhongshan New Materials wasn’t some kind of industry giant; they had limited resources. It was difficult to produce short term results from lithium-sulfur batteries. Li Rongen was one of the major shareholders of Zhongshan New Materials. Therefore, he didn’t want to invest in this direction just yet.
Also, the Chinese lithium battery anode materials market still had a huge market cap unfulfilled. It was much better to fill in the pre-existing market demand than to research and develop new materials.
The lithium-sulfur battery project was only pursued by industry giants.
…
The summary documents for the conference would be released in two weeks, but it didn’t have much to do with Lu Zhou.
The national project was important, and Lu Zhou was able to enjoy advantageous government policies. However, the system mission was also very important, so Lu Zhou had to focus on both ends.
Although Lu Zhou’s two laboratories both researched hollow carbon spheres, their respective missions were different. However, the two laboratories were still able to occasionally complement each other.
The next morning, Lu Zhou did some student interviews through online video calls. He then called Professor Sarrot who was at Silicon Valley.
The instrument was going to take a while to arrive at Jinling’s research institute. However, the laboratory in Silicon Valley was ready to start doing experiments.
US$100,000 salary wasn’t cheap; Lu Zhou wanted to put his money to good use.
Lu Zhou wrote up a research plan and sent it to Sarrot’s email.
“… I already sent the specific research plan to your email. Read it, and ask me if you have any questions.”
Lu Zhou’s topological analysis of the carbon nanosphere proved that its prototype could be disassembled into a C70 fullerene molecule and a carbon nanotube.
Chemically speaking, the π bond of the C70 fullerene material was opened and modified by a carbon nanotube, and its molecular space configuration was changed.
Although this sounded complex, it wasn’t actually that difficult to do this.
First, they could produce a vacuum in the arc chamber before introducing helium gas. The two high-purity graphite rods would then be brought close to each other, and an arc effect could be generated using a high-voltage electricity charge. The plasma generated by the carbon rod gasification would continuously collide under the inert gas atmosphere and form stable fullerene macromolecules such as C60 and C70.
Then screened out the C70 molecules and mixed with carbon nanotubes produced by a CVD vacuum tube furnace. A thermal reaction would then occur in the vacuum environment.
Due to the instability of the π bond and the large π bond, a complicated chemical reaction would occur during the heating process. Then, the physical and chemical properties of the product would be analyzed using the polymer model.
It might be possible to find a few milligrams of treasure in a thousand grams of the product. Then one could draw different graphs using time, materials, and other factors. After that was to find a similar empirical formula before finally establishing a perfect theory.
Although this method seemed stupid, it was actually the most efficient method and the best choice.
Before looking for a stable preparation method, one would have to consider all of the possible problems. In fact, many materials science experiments were done through this “stupid method”.
Even though Sarrot knew that this boring experiment was the only choice, after he saw the research plan formulated by Lu Zhou, Sarrot couldn’t help but say, “To be honest, we can totally outsource these experiments.”
Lu Zhou said, “I don’t trust other people’s data. Furthermore, what’s the point of having you if I’m just going to outsource everything.”
Sarrot smiled and changed the topic of conversation.
“I promise, boss, I will follow your request immediately.”
Lu Zhou nodded with satisfaction and said, “Okay, trust in your research. This could turn into a Nature thesis.”
Although Sarrot knew not to complain, he still couldn’t help but think.
This thing is going on Nature?
Impossible.
This thing has no hope.
