Chapter 486 Let's Make a Deal

"A lot of things can't be explained clearly in the email, and it's not convenient to put it in the email. I'll demonstrate it to you on the spot, and you will understand how amazing this thing is."

With that said, Lu Zhou nodded to Qian Zhongming, indicating that it was time to start.

After receiving Lu Zhou's instructions, Qian Zhongming pressed a few buttons on the computer next to him, and operated the device to import liquid helium to the top of the glass cover.

Almost at the moment when the ultra-low temperature liquid helium comes into contact with the wire, the heat of the wire is lost at an incredible speed, and then the transition temperature is quickly reached, and the resistivity curve on the computer screen also slides to the bottom.

Professor Creber's pupils shrank slightly.

From his face, one could clearly see the surprise.

"It's too early to be surprised," Lu Zhou smiled faintly, looked at Qian Zhongming, and continued, "Increase the voltage."

"OK."

Skillfully operating the equipment, Qian Zhongming followed Lu Zhou's instructions and increased the voltage applied to both ends of the wire.

A superconductor has three critical parameters, namely the critical transition temperature Tc, the critical magnetic field strength Hc, and the critical current density Jc.

The meaning of Hc is that when the magnetic field strength on the surface of the superconductor reaches a certain magnetic field strength Hc, it will exit the superconducting state.

The meaning of Jc is the same. When the voltage on both sides of the conductor reaches a certain value, the current passing through the superconductor exceeds the critical value, and the conductor will exit the superconducting state.

According to the data of the reaction in the experiment, in these three critical parameters, the SG-1 material has shown quite excellent performance.

At least, it has far outperformed cuprate superconducting materials.

Looking at the curve of resistivity versus current, Professor Kleiber finally showed a look of shock on his face.

From the perspective of an engineer, he can clearly see that the difficulty of maintaining this "SG-1" superconducting material at the superconducting transition temperature is far more difficult than maintaining the copper oxide material at the superconducting temperature. Much easier at the transition temperature.

Glancing at Kleiber, Lu Zhou continued: "In addition to these images, we observed its atomic distribution structure under a scanning tunneling microscope, and drew a simulated image of the distribution of carbon atoms based on these data."

Professor Kleber asked cautiously: "Can you show it to me?"

Lu Zhou smiled, and said in a relaxed tone, "Of course."

After all, he continued to signal to Qian Zhongming and called up the simulated image.

In the simulated image, the carbon atoms marked in green are tightly packed.

In the horizontal structure, densely packed carbon atoms are arranged in a hexagonal shape in a space with a width of only a thousand nanometers, just like a net woven with six grid patterns.

In the vertical structure, the layers are stacked at a slight angle, and a slender columnar structure is drawn along the vertical direction.

It is almost like a handicraft, and it is not difficult for people to feel the difficulty just by looking at it.

Marveling at the molecular processing technology involved, and looking at the simulated images on the computer screen, Professor Kreber finally couldn't help asking: "How did you do it?"

Lu Zhou smiled lightly, and said, "We got inspiration from the vapor deposition method. As for how to do it, please forgive me for not revealing it for the time being. I hope you can understand."

In fact, the synthesis technology of a single graphene nanoribbon was born as early as 2012, which is not magical in itself.

One of the more classic methods is to etch grooves on the surface of silicon carbide, and use this as a substrate, on which graphene nanoribbons with a width of only a few nanometers can be formed.

Even in the latest research results, the graphene nanoribbon synthesis technology jointly completed by the CNR Institute of Nanoscience in Italy and the University of Strasbourg in France cut the nanoribbon to a width of seven atoms.

However, even with existing research results available for reference, difficulties still exist.

For example, how to make vertically stacked graphene nanoribbons and how to adjust the overlapping angle between layers are all problems that must be solved.

In designing the experiment, Lu Zhou referred to the method of the CNR Institute of Nanoscience, but instead of using silicon carbide, he used a single-atom-thick metal rhodium flake made by reducing polyvinylpyrrolidone with formaldehyde, a weak ligand. , punch holes after stacking, and then adjust the overlapping angle.

It turns out that manipulating micron-sized substrates is significantly easier than fiddling with hexagons a few atoms wide.

And as long as the substrate is successfully obtained, it is equivalent to obtaining the mold for synthesizing the wire, which can be used repeatedly in the laboratory or production line.

Of course, while this may seem simple to say, it is not so simple in practice.

This involves many complicated methods, as well as the tireless efforts of countless scientific researchers.

Fortunately, the job was finally done.

Creber couldn't help asking, "What about the cost?"

Lu Zhou said in a relaxed tone: "The main cost is concentrated on the production of the substrate, a small amount of production costs are indeed high, but according to our research, as long as the scale of production is expanded, its cost is not as difficult as we imagined. accept."

Hearing this sentence, Kleiber had a bitter smile on his face: "How long do you think it will take until the industry starts to take an interest in it?"

The industry will not decide to produce a technology just because it is interesting enough, nor will it rush to update its production line just because ITER needs to add experimental reactors, unless their country obtains enough profitable orders for them through the ITER organization.

or……

One day, high-tech companies such as Microsoft suddenly discovered that SG-1 materials can be used to describe circuit boards, or other places such as supercomputing chips. The demand generated by downstream industries pushed upstream companies to start expanding this field. production capacity.

At that time, there is no doubt that the price of this material will drop.

In fact, Kleiber feels that this "hair" has such potential, but he doesn't know how long he will have to wait for this day.

Industry may never be interested if it doesn't see enough profit.

Lu Zhou smiled lightly, but said indifferently: "This is not a market economy in the full sense, and the laws you mentioned are not fully applicable here. It is not necessarily entirely the market that guides the industry. It's something else."

Professor Kleiber raised his eyebrows, as if he understood what Lu Zhou was referring to.

Although in his opinion, doing so is simply nonsense...

"You don't have to worry about the mass production of SG-1 wires. In fact, we have already contacted relevant companies, and the design of the production line has entered the final stage. We will be able to implement the SG-1 material in one year at the latest. Production."

After a pause, Lu Zhou looked at Professor Kleiber and said.

"Let's make a deal."