Siheyuan: I eat melons while doing scientific research

Chapter 1458 Exceeding the Expectations (4k, I still need to write an extra chapter, this is all I can post today)

If this place is indeed confirmed to be an oil field, then the technology related to offshore oil extraction definitely needs to be improved.

An isolated oil field may not be very significant, and its return on investment may not be particularly advantageous. However, if multiple oil fields are discovered, the situation changes.

How confident are you?

"We are very confident. To put it simply, our surveying equipment has been upgraded significantly. With the help of the 17th and 12th Ministries of Machinery Industry and other parties, our equipment and capabilities have made great strides. Even if this is not the case, we believe that the next one, or even many more, will be just around the corner."

This is the core reason why the Ministry of Land and Resources is so eager to introduce this technology—the future is already here. It's not just about this large, integrated oil field; the proportion of shallow-sea oil development in oil production is gradually increasing.

Even if we discover now that this area isn't an oil field, there's no guarantee that there won't be more and more in the future.

"To be honest, offshore oil extraction technology is indeed quite difficult right now, and it's not like we haven't done our work. We've done our research, and the most mature technology is currently in the West, so it's very difficult to acquire."

This is why the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation was somewhat embarrassed when it received the call – it was a really difficult situation.

When it comes to shallow-sea oil extraction, one is Citibank, which was the first to start offshore oil extraction, using a platform built with wooden frames in the Gulf of Mexico. The other is Johns Hopkins, whose North Sea light crude oil was extracted in the same way.

The Ministry of Land and Resources was not unaware of the situation, after all, that was their job, and they were actually more aware of these matters than the other party. They also understood the difficulties faced by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation: "Yes, we are aware of the situation, but we don't require deep sea, just shallow sea, with a water depth of less than 30 meters. Please take good care of us with this condition."

Whether it's the coral reefs in the south, the eastern Guangdong bay area, or the Bohai Sea where major discoveries have been made, the depths of these newly discovered oil fields are roughly within this range.

This requirement brought a sigh of relief to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. Although 30 meters is as high as a 10-story building, it is still much less difficult overall.

"Yes, let's hurry up and try to find a solution." This idea will probably have to be put in Gaul's hands.
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Gao Zhendong hadn't expected Bo Hai's actions to be so swift; he was now pleased about another matter that was also progressing rapidly.

"Chief Engineer Gao, good news! The linear motor for the optical drive is finished!" Colleagues from the Third Factory and the Computer Peripheral Research Institute of Factory 1201 came together to bring this good news.

"Really? Let me see!" This "really" was just a common expression, but Gao Zhendong didn't actually disbelieve it.

"We've already integrated the laser head here," a colleague from the technical department of the third factory said, handing over a small device.

If someone is unfamiliar with linear motors, they probably wouldn't be able to tell that this is an electric motor; it just looks like a metal rod with a square plastic block on it.

To be honest, Gao Zhendong only knew about this thing, but he hadn't really had any contact with it in his previous life. After all, by the time he could understand computer parts, optical drives were no longer in use.

However, when I was in my supervisor's lab, there were two old workstations with this device. My supervisor and his colleagues used it to burn CDs, mainly for storing data and for burning data for certain special projects.

The laser heads and linear motor modules that the comrades were holding were much larger than the ones Gao Zhendong had seen in his previous life. After all, the technology of this day is incomparable to that of decades later.

But it doesn't matter how big or small it is, as long as it works. The difference between this thing and the laser head of the optical drive from the previous generation is not as big as the difference between the earliest hard drives and the later 3.5 or even 2.5-inch disks.

Overall, it's quite small and exquisite.

Looking at this thing, Gao Zhendong even had a moment of feeling that things had changed and people were no longer the same, only the flow of time had been reversed.

He shook his head, trying to banish the emotion from his mind.

"What's missing from the CD-ROM drive now?" Gao Zhendong asked.

"There's not much left. Now it's just integration and debugging. All the parts are complete, and there are even some left over," said a colleague from the Third Factory's electronics laboratory.

"Excessive?" Gao Zhendong looked at them.

"Yes, but we'll report this to you later." The colleague from the technical department glanced at the colleague from Factory 1201 and didn't continue.

"Director Gao, we also exceeded our targets." The comrades from the Peripheral Equipment Research Institute of Factory 1201 didn't mind the concealment in the words of the Technical Department of the Third Branch Factory. They knew the characteristics of this unit all too well. To put it bluntly, they wouldn't listen even if you asked them to.

"Oh? Tell me."

"This linear motor added the last board to our hard drive."

This linear motor has a control precision of 1 micrometer, so it can be used not only for optical drives but also for hard drives.

A magnetic medium, a magnetic reluctance head, and a linear motor—these components combined essentially make up a complete hard drive.

Although Gao Zhendong knew that later hard drives took a different approach in terms of head support and head control, this did not prevent his comrades from using this linear motor to make the hard drive first.

The advantage of this is that it's fast and everything is ready.

There are also disadvantages. This structure is more suitable for single-platter double-sided hard drives. If it is a multi-platter hard drive, this structure will make the disk body very thick.

Of course, even so, compared to the bulky 18M discs at that time, this disc, even with multiple discs, was still considered small and exquisite.

"Hmm, very good. Here's the plan: you guys organize yourselves, split into two groups, and try to get both the optical drive and the hard drive out in one go, a double celebration! Are you guys confident?"

"Yes!" came the resolute reply.

After seeing off the eager and high-spirited comrades from Factory 1201, Gao Zhendong turned to the comrades from Factory 3 and smiled, "Tell me, what other good news do you have?"

The colleague from the technical department said with a slightly mysterious smile, "Chief Engineer Gao, the precision of this linear motor in our hands is not 1 micrometer, but 0.5 micrometers."

Gao Zhendong turned to look at him: "Are you sure?"

"Yes, with the addition of the raster technology you mentioned, and after repeated testing, there are no problems. It's just that the optical drive only requires 1 micrometer, so we slightly reduced the precision to lower the price. But in reality, the precision we can reliably achieve is 0.5 micrometers, and there's still potential for improvement."

Gao Zhendong laughed heartily. 0.5 micrometers, or 500 nanometers, even after deducting some error redundancy, achieving a motion positioning accuracy of 800 nanometers is entirely feasible. "Good! Good! You've done a great job!"

Gao Zhendong, who had been keeping the CMOS sensor under wraps, can now rest assured.

After all, developing CMOS technology also costs money. If there is no significant progress in the manufacturing process, and only the flip-flop speed has increased, the overall significance is not very great.

Now, our comrades have reduced the positioning accuracy of continuous motion to at least below 800 nanometers. Gao Zhendong can shamelessly say that our lithography technology is now ready to enter the nanometer era!
Anyway, boasting is the norm in the chip industry. For example, it's not a big deal that Gao Zhendong started boasting about the equivalent linewidth of chips below 10nm a little earlier.

Moreover, this time, Gao Zhendong not only needs to solve problems such as turnover speed and line width, but he also needs to solve another problem: production capacity.

"Okay, you guys hand over the relevant work to the comrades at Factory 1201 as soon as possible. Next, contact the comrades on the lithography machine side immediately. This time, we're going to pull off something big!"

As for optical drives and hard drives, the comrades in the electronics lab of the Third Factory who are working on linear motors can be said to have completed their task.

But for lithography machines, their mission has only just begun.

This isn't the only good news.

"Committee Member Gao, the raw silk has been spun!" Engineer Pan's voice was very excited on the phone.

"Send me the report to take a look. Never mind, I'll send someone to pick it up." Gao Zhendong was getting impatient.

These days, modems are incredibly slow, especially for scanned documents like lab reports with many pages. It's just like the old saying Gao Zhendong used to say.

Even the fastest network can't match the bandwidth of a truck carrying a hard drive.

"No need, no need, I'll bring it to you right away. I need to consult you about the next step of my work. I called to confirm if you were in the office."

"Okay, then come right away. I'll be waiting for you in my office."

Why not save half the time? Gao Zhendong himself is in a hurry too.

In less than half an hour, Pan and his colleagues, having received Gao Zhendong's invitation and given the green light all the way, were sitting in Gao Zhendong's office.

"You guys make your own tea, I won't bother you." Gao Zhendong pointed to the thermos and tea canister next to him, not bothering to be polite with his comrades. They were all old acquaintances, so there was no need for formalities.

Pan and his colleagues happily poured themselves tea. Committee Member Gao's tea was of the highest quality, enough to make any connoisseur remember it fondly.

"Crystallization degree 52%... Good! Comrades, you have a great grasp on process implementation!"

For polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor fibers, the crystallinity cannot be lower than 45%. Below this value, the tensile strength of the resulting carbon fiber will be poor. One of the main measures to improve the tensile strength of carbon fiber is to refine the crystallinity of PAN fibers.

Gao Zhendong originally thought that just stepping on the threshold would be enough to qualify, but he didn't expect the comrades in the Applied Chemistry Department to be so capable, raising the bar by a whole lot.

"If I didn't have this level of skill, I would be letting you down after giving me such detailed guidance," said Engineer Pan modestly as he poured tea leaves into his cup.

That's certainly a bit of modesty. After all, guidance is guidance, but it involves technology decades in the future, and it's not necessarily something that can be handled in the current environment. In this field, being one step ahead is genius, being two steps ahead is madness, and that's absolutely true.

"Orientation level 92%... Hmm, very good, very good..."

"We could have achieved a higher result, but firstly, the cost was too high, and secondly, you instructed us not to exceed 95%." There seemed to be a hint of regret in Engineer Pan's tone, as he felt that he hadn't been able to bring out the full potential of his comrades.

Gao Zhendong laughed: "It's not that the higher the better, but it can't be too low either. Below 90%, the density is poor and the final tensile strength of the carbon fiber is poor, but above 95%, it is easy to have fuzz and broken fibers in subsequent processes."

The comrades have always been puzzled as to how Gao Zhendong deduced the corresponding changes in situation and performance indicators from these data, since some things are really difficult to "infer" from them.

But no matter how much they couldn't understand it, after a series of experiments and studies, the final results were basically not far from what Committee Member Gao said.

You have to admit it. Although this matter seems quite mysterious, the result speaks for itself.

Thinking about this, Pan and his colleagues couldn't help but admire him.

"Committee Member Gao, you know what? The dry-wet spinning method you proposed has also solved a major problem for us comrades in the chemical fiber industry!" Mentioning this, the comrades' admiration was like a surging river.

As a type of chemical fiber in the strict sense, polyacrylonitrile fiber naturally attracted the best and brightest from the chemical fiber field, who were mobilized by the Ministry of Chemical Industry and the textile industry to work on the polyacrylonitrile precursor fiber process.

This is a great bargain.

"Huh? There's this unexpected bonus?" Gao Zhendong wasn't surprised. Techniques accumulated over decades always have some universality.

"Yes. Two colleagues who research high-performance fibers also joined our work. They discovered that compared to direct wet spinning, the yarn spun using the dry-wet method eliminates groove defects on the fiber surface, resulting in an incredibly smooth fiber surface..."

The word "smooth" might be used to describe a person with mixed reviews, but in this context, it's definitely a compliment.

Gao Zhendong laughed: "That's normal. In wet spinning, the raw material goes directly into the coagulation stage after extrusion. There's no time to repair the grooves caused by nozzle defects. Dry spinning is much better in this respect. After the raw material is extruded, it expands in the air and then stretches and thins before entering the coagulation bath, which naturally eliminates the grooves on the surface."

The comrades were all astonished. The principle seemed very simple, but these ubiquitous little details and tips could inadvertently help them solve their own specific problems.

This state of being driven by major projects, leading a host of related fields forward in tandem, is the most ideal in scientific research. The reason people like to undertake large-scale projects is not entirely because they are ambitious, but because large-scale projects and research topics, if done well, can achieve this effect.

In fact, the example given by Engineer Pan is just one of the simplest examples. There are many similar cases. Not to mention anything else, the process that includes multi-stage coagulation, multiple stretching, washing, densification, and heat setting plays a very important role in the research and production of other chemical fibers.

Gao Zhendong didn't say much about this matter, as he saw it as a natural progression. What he cared about most was the quality of the PAN fiber itself.

(End of this chapter)