Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The Frick Chemistry Laboratory had state of the art hardware. Princeton was not only willing to spend money on professors, but they were also willing to spend on the equipment.
Connie carried the latest MACCOR high-precision battery testing system over to Lu Zhou and smiled.
“This is the best battery testing system in the entire Frick Chemistry Laboratory, I borrowed it for you!”
Lu Zhou: “Actually I don’t need such a good battery testing system…”
Connie said, “But you said that investing in the equipment is better than wasting money on producing more samples.”
Lu Zhou stared at Connie and suddenly realized that he wasn’t as dumb as he thought.
The money for this machine came from Lu Zhou’s account.
If it was before, Lu Zhou would definitely feel like he was wasting money.
But now…
Okay, he was still a little distressed.
However, he wasn’t as distressed as before.
Lu Zhou asked with a serious tone, “Does the equipment make battery samples?”
Connie immediately said, “No problem, this is easy!”
Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, “You are responsible for No.11 and No.14. I’ll do samples No.15 and No.23. Mix the hollow carbon sphere powder with sulfur, using the ratios of 30%, 20%, and 10%. Then make a positive electrode material, and assemble the lithium battery, do you understand?”
Connie said, “Of course!”
The negative electrode material synthesis process was a piece of cake. The modified PDMS film and the copper core lithium plate was the standard of any major materials research institutes.
However, the positive electrode material was slightly more difficult.
It wasn’t just the hollow carbon spheres; all carbon nanomaterials had similar problems.
The simple mechanical stirring and grinding could only macroscopically mix the hollow carbon spheres with the matrix powder. It couldn’t disperse the hollow carbon spheres on the microscopic level.
Before the hollow carbon spheres were mixed with the sulfur, they were also dispersed in ethanol by adding a surfactant such as polyurethane.
The remaining steps were similar to Lu Zhou’s first lithium battery experiment.
The batteries were assembled in a glove box and then connected to a battery testing system. The testing system was able to calculate the performance of the materials by doing a large number of charge and discharge tests.
This step required no skills.
Actually, researching materials science wasn’t that difficult.
The current research and development of new materials were based on the researchers’ “scientific intuition” and a large number of repeated “trial” experiments. They tried to find a feasible material under set conditions. If Lu Zhou could build a set of materials science theories, then it would be game-changing.
Although mathematical methods could greatly reduce the number of experiments required, Lu Zhou still had to do some experiments.
…
Lu Zhou remembered that the last time he worked this hard was around this time last year.
In order to complete the Goldbach’s conjecture, Lu Zhou locked himself in his 20 square meters apartment. He completely immersed himself in the labyrinth of numbers and eventually found a way out.
Lu Zhou’s excitement right now paled in comparison to back then.
He felt nostalgic for his mathematics days.
It had been a week since his experiment started.
Other than sleeping, Lu Zhou had spent all his time in the laboratory.
Two days ago, Yang Xu, who managed the experiment at the Jinling Institute of Computational Materials, created a spreadsheet of the effects of the surface area, pore size, and the ratio of polysulfide in the electrolyte on the sulfur loading. This data arrived in Lu Zhou’s mailbox.
In order to not delay the Jinling research institute’s progress in the experiment, Lu Zhou needed to build a mathematical model as soon as possible and develop a plan for the next experiment.
His work seemed to be piled together.
Lu Zhou threw his pen aside and looked at Connie, who was looking at a sample.
“How is No. 15 doing?”
Connie had dark circles around his eyes as he looked at the scanning electron microscope and shook his head. He said, “The last group was completely scrapped. Almost all of the sulfur was deposited on the surface on the carbon material. You can look at it, it looks very pretty…”
Lu Zhou sighed and said, “Take a scanned image of the sample and dispose of it… I’ve seen enough.”
This is horrible.
It seems that samples 11, 14 and 15 are all useless.
Facing the tragic result, Lu Zhou couldn’t help but wonder if his theory was wrong.
Can the surface area of [2326m2g-1, 3762m2g-1] and the hollow carbon spheres in the range of [60nm-70nm] really inhibit the diffusion of polysulfide compounds?
He didn’t want to doubt his theory and assumption.
Because he had calculated this assumption many times and received the same result.
If his theory was wrong, then he would face a difficult choice.
He could either pretend he didn’t know or he could be a moral scholar. Once he found his mistakes, he could earnestly ask the Shuimu University to withdraw his thesis submission…
The former solution was feasible. Even if Lu Zhou were proven wrong by someone in the future, he could claim that it was an “honest mistake”. No one would blame him…
Wait a minute…
Lu Zhou suddenly realized something.
My experiment isn’t even over, why am I thinking of the aftermath.
What kind of mentality is that?
Lu Zhou clenched his fists and took a deep breath. He then calmed himself down and looked at Connie.
“How is sample No. 23 doing?”
“Let me look at it… 10% and 30% were destroyed within 200 revolutions, and 20% is… Unbelievable, it has been 500 revolutions, but it’s still struggling to survive.”
The word struggling was used interestingly.
It seemed that Lu Zhou’s assistant had no hope for this experiment.
However, Lu Zhou still had hope.
He restrained his excitement and asked, “What is the volume change of the anode material?”
Connie looked at the battery through the transparent glass. He squinted his eyes and said, “It doesn’t seem to have changed.”
Lu Zhou shouted, “Don’t give me an estimation, I want an accurate answer!”
“I know, I’m just kidding…” Connie disassembled the battery and carefully removed the positive electrode material. He then measured the width change with a vernier caliper.
Even at a macroscopic level, the volume expansion of carbon-sulfur composites was very obvious.
Connie recorded the measurement and was confused.
He recorded it again.
And again…
Connie looked back at Lu Zhou. Lu Zhou frowned and asked, “A failure?”
“No…” Connie shook his head. He gulped and said, “The results are unbelievably good…”
“Determine the chemical composition of the electrolyte!” Lu Zhou stood up from his chair and snapped, “Do it fast!”
