Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 140 Finding High-Temperature Superconducting Materials
Wang Jiankun's decision to put the research of superconducting materials at the forefront was a well-considered one.

Now the whole world has entered the electrical age, and the application of electric energy has become very common. However, due to the existence of resistance, a very large part of the electric energy is lost during the transmission process.

The application of superconducting materials can significantly reduce the loss of electric energy during transmission.

In addition, superconducting materials can not only improve conductivity, but also have another effect that has great application value, that is, the Meissner effect.

The specific situation of this effect is: when a superconductor is in a superconducting state in a magnetic field, the magnetic field intensity generated inside it can completely offset the external magnetic field, so that the internal magnetic induction intensity is zero.

That is, the magnetic lines of force are completely excluded from the superconductor.

Superconducting materials have many application scenarios, such as superconducting strong magnets, superconducting energy storage magnets, superconducting motors, superconducting electromagnetic propulsion systems, superconducting magnetic levitation trains, superconducting computers, superconducting gyroscopes, and so on.

The above-mentioned superconducting application scenarios have been thought of by scientists and engineers in the information he collected, and many of them have also envisioned the existence of such a high-temperature superconducting material and then drew design drawings.

However, the whole world is now waiting for the discovery of high-temperature superconducting materials, and only a few laboratories are conducting preliminary explorations of these applications. They use expensive liquid helium as a coolant and select materials such as copper oxide with a superconducting transition temperature of around 19K.

Wang Jiankun had only built a testing laboratory, produced more than 3 kilograms of liquid nitrogen, and then carried out replication experiments based on some superconducting materials mentioned in the literature.

He conducted tests in the order in which superconductivity was discovered and the critical temperatures of the materials from low to high.

First, he cooled the mercury that had solidified into a solid using liquid nitrogen, and at the same time connected it to a resistance detector. When the temperature reached 4.2K, its resistance indeed disappeared instantly.

Wang Jiankun used his superpowers to observe when the solid mercury began to cool down, and he magnified this thin thread of mercury to the extreme in his mind.

At this moment, in my mind, countless giant spheres with a diameter of 10 meters are arranged and combined into a multi-sided long strip. These huge spheres are still vibrating, and the electron clouds around them are also constantly combining and changing.

As the liquid helium acts on the mercury, the amplitude of the vibration of these huge spheres gradually decreases, the speed of change of the external electron cloud also begins to slow down, and only the digits after the decimal point of the resistance value on the resistance meter change, indicating that general cooling does not change the resistance.

As the temperature gradually dropped to around 4.2K, Wang Jiankun found that these giant balls almost stopped vibrating, but the external electron cloud was still changing slowly, and the resistance value remained the same as before.

When the temperature reaches 4.2K, a strange phenomenon occurs: the outer electron cloud forms a relatively stable channel, and the inner atomic nuclei also change their positions slightly, forming a continuous and stable lattice.

Wang Jiankun carefully observed the mercury atoms in his mind at this moment, and the changing positions of the giant mercury ball in his mind up, down, left and right. After multi-angle analysis, he found that these atomic nuclei did form special lattice structures, thereby binding the external electrons into a continuous electron band.

This structure allows the resistance for external electrons to pass through to zero when there is an electric potential difference between the two sides.

After testing the single metal mercury, he also conducted superconductivity tests on zinc, aluminum, lead, tungsten and other metals mentioned in the materials.

With his super powers, he discovered that when the temperature reaches the superconducting critical temperature of these materials, the atomic nuclei will indeed undergo slight changes in position, thus forming a relatively regular positively charged lattice, thereby binding the outer electrons into an electron band.

This phenomenon cannot be discovered by existing scientific instruments unless observed with superpowers.

After some thought, Wang Jiankun came to his own understanding of the causes of superconductivity.

Although all atoms are electrically neutral, the positive charge carried by the inner nucleus is neutralized by the negative charge carried by the electrons outside the nucleus.

However, this electrical neutralization phenomenon is macroscopic and different from that at the microscopic level.

Because the atomic nucleus inside and the electrons outside are constantly moving, the atomic nucleus is either positively charged or negatively charged in a very small period of time.

It’s just that ordinary instruments cannot detect the charge of atoms. After all, the time interval is the detection limit that all current instruments cannot reach.

Since atoms are charged, conduction can be understood as when there is an electric potential difference, the nucleus of the atom will attract external electrons, and the electrons of the atom itself will repel external electrons.

When the forces of attraction and repulsion are unequal, conduction occurs.

This can also explain the reason for the formation of resistance, because electrons have to go through the attraction and repulsion of the nucleus and external electrons. This process is doing work on the atoms. The macroscopic manifestation is the existence of resistance. Therefore, the process of conduction will also involve a process of heat generation, and the heat generation is because the atoms do work when external electrons pass through.

Although high school knowledge divides the world's materials into conductors and insulators, it is actually a rigid division. There is no absolute insulator in the world. When the voltage, that is, the potential difference, reaches a certain level, all non-conductive materials will conduct electricity.

Just like lightning, because the voltage is large enough, electric current can flow in the air.

The superconductivity phenomenon is formed because atomic nuclei spontaneously form regular, continuous and stable positively charged lattices at a certain temperature.

Although the previous irregular lattice can conduct electricity, there is still an electric potential difference between different lattices.

For materials that have not yet formed a superconducting state, the internal lattice is like a series of steps, and electrons have to consume some energy every time they go up a step.

When a material forms a superconducting state, its internal lattice instantly connects to form a vacuum tube. When there are electrons on both sides, the electrons can pass through at ultra-high speed without consuming any energy.

In order to verify whether his understanding was correct, Wang Jiankun began to observe multi-element materials after completing the observation of single-element superconducting phenomena.

While observing the superconducting changes in several compounds, Wang Jiankun became convinced that his understanding was correct and that the reason for the formation of superconductivity was the same as he thought.

Now that the cause has been found, he told Sophon the information he observed and asked Sophon to help analyze and calculate to see if Sophon's supercomputing power could be used to discover new superconducting materials.

Sophon used its quantum computing capabilities to perform calculations based on the data observed by Wang Jiankun.

It ended soon, telling Wang Jiankun that if he wanted to find high-temperature superconductivity, he would need to cool down and observe the elements of the entire periodic table.

Because the formation of superconductivity is closely related to the vibration of atomic nuclei. No matter at what temperature, the atomic nuclei of some elements cannot vibrate and combine into regular, continuous and stable lattices.

However, when combined with other elements, it is possible to form this peculiar structure.

Therefore, if we want to discover new superconducting materials through calculation, we must have enough data to make the calculation possible.

And it is not just the cooling data of a single substance, but also the cooling data after it is combined with multiple elements.

However, in order to obtain usable high-temperature superconducting materials as soon as possible, Wang Jiankun chose to narrow the scope.

He decided to use aluminum as the main material for his research.

Aluminum is the most abundant metal element in the earth's crust. If it needs to be used on a large scale in the future, it will not be troubled by the source of raw materials.

Moreover, single aluminum itself can produce superconductivity at 1.2K, so choosing it as the main superconducting material has a great success rate.

Aluminum itself has excellent mechanical properties, ductility, and machinability. If aluminum accounts for a large proportion of the materials developed in the future, it will be very convenient to make aluminum-based superconductors into cables and various superconducting components.

After the main materials are selected, the next step is to screen the auxiliary materials.

In traditional Chinese medicine, there are three types of drugs: monarch, minister, assistant and envoy. According to the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, different materials play different roles to achieve the effect of solving the cause of the disease. So when choosing auxiliary materials, some obviously inappropriate ones should be eliminated first. Only when there is no other way, will those that have been screened out be considered.

First of all, radioactive elements are not suitable. They certainly cannot be used as auxiliary materials. If they are used, the usage scenarios of this superconducting material will be greatly reduced.

The next are some elements that are expensive and scarce, such as gold, platinum, iridium, etc. These elements will only be considered as a last resort when ordinary elements cannot be found.

The last one is hydrogen, an inert element. Hydrogen is not used because its atom is too small and easily peels off in metal compounds, resulting in hydrogen embrittlement. Inert elements are difficult to react chemically with other elements. In the future, if industrial production is to be carried out, it will be difficult to react, which means that high temperature and high pressure and other means will be needed, and production will become very difficult.

After eliminating these elements, Wang Jiankun listed a test plan for data collection in the coming period.

This September, he will mainly stay in Wuyuan, conducting training in microcomputer training classes, guiding students in the college entrance examination sprint classes, and also conducting research on superconducting materials.

That night, after Wang Jiankun made a plan, he asked Chieko to help him come up with 15 sets of high school knowledge point test questions. After coming up with the questions, he used his superpowers to directly create 15 sets, and planned to give them to the principal the next day so that he could arrange the exam.

Then he used his super powers to create 100 introductory programming materials and prepared to take them to the principal, asking him to find someone to distribute them to people who were interested in participating in the computer training class.

……

"Principal, I brought the test questions and programming materials. Where would you put them?"

At around 9 a.m., Wang Jiankun rode a motorcycle to the school and took the information to the principal's office when he returned from a meeting.

"Jiankun, you are very efficient. You prepared it so quickly. I thought you would bring it in the afternoon."

"The information is all stored in the computer. I printed it out with a printer, bound it, and brought it here. However, the information for the college entrance examination sprint class will be released more slowly in the future. After all, it will be fine-tuned based on their answers."

"I understand. You should also take care of your rest. Put the information away and go home. I'll give you the results when I have them."

"Okay, I was busy too late yesterday, so I'll go back first. I'll come back at this time tomorrow morning!"

In fact, he was mainly studying superconducting materials last night and stayed up too late, so he didn't spend much time using his superpowers to create these learning and programming materials.

After leaving the principal's office, Wang Jiankun wandered around the school for a while before leaving. He went to the East Gate Bridge to buy some food and brought it back to the base.

After returning to the base, he began cooling tests on various elements according to the schedule he made last night.

As he magnified and observed over the past few days, his superpowers were gradually getting stronger. The range of his projection had reached 300 meters, and the magnification had also increased.

As the magnification increased, he discovered that atoms do not always remain spherical. The shape of the nucleus will undergo slight deformations due to the position and density of the external electron cloud, and the external electron cloud will also change shape due to the vibration of the internal nucleus.

However, he could not analyze the corresponding change mechanism yet and could only observe and give the observation data to Zhizi for recording and analysis.

However, he guessed that these changes must be related to some kind of force, and the deeper reason is most likely because the appearance of the elementary particles that make up these protons, neutrons and electrons are in motion, causing this atomic deformation.

Throughout the day, Wang Jiankun tested the sudden changes in temperature of 15 elements. Most of these elements superconduct near absolute zero, and only three of them superconduct at 3 or 2K.

He also analyzed and understood the superconductivity phenomenon that occurs in most locations at absolute 0 degrees.

That is, under the state of absolute 0 degrees, the vibration of elements completely disappears, and a stable and regular continuous lattice can be formed at that moment, and the external electron cloud also forms an electron belt at the same time.

Perhaps some properties of elementary particles are at work here, but this is just Wang Jiankun's guess. He cannot observe such a microscopic structure now, and will have to wait until the large particle collider is completed before he can observe it.

However, it is better to have high-temperature superconducting materials to build a large particle collider. Otherwise, using the currently discovered low-temperature superconducting materials or using the method of piling materials to create a strong magnetic field will require energy that may not be able to be maintained by him now.

If high-temperature superconducting materials or room-temperature superconducting materials are used to build a large particle collider, the energy consumption will be reduced by one or two orders of magnitude.

And the difficulty of the entire construction can be greatly reduced.

In the next few days, Wang Jiankun conducted research on superconducting materials during the day and gave training to the college entrance examination cram school between 6 and 10 in the evening.

By the second week, he started teaching in the microcomputer training class again.

When teaching microcomputers, Lang Junjian also participated as an assistant. After this month, the teaching work of this training class will be handed over to him. After all, these people will develop software under his leadership.

This time, the computer training class recruited only 16 students from No. Middle School, and all of them were senior high school students. They felt that it would be difficult to get into their ideal university.

This is not because they are stupid, but because they are biased in some subjects. Among these 16 students, 14 are good at math, physics and chemistry are also OK, but English and Chinese are very poor. After seeing this, Wang Jiankun felt that it would be very difficult to catch up.
The other two have strong logical thinking ability and are good at English, but their math and physics scores are average, so it is difficult for them to get into university. So they plan to give this training class a try.

We also recruited 10 people from outside No. Middle School, almost all of whom were children of the school’s faculty and staff or the children of their relatives and friends.

Wang Jiankun attached great importance to the first batch of students. He graded their test papers personally and taught the first few classes in person. He hoped that all of them could pass the final examination smoothly and participate in subsequent software development projects.

Two weeks passed in this regular manner, and Wang Jiankun completed all the planned element tests.

After handing over all the data to Zhizi, Zhizi spent most of the day calculating and finally came up with two possible successful superconducting materials.

The first one has the highest probability, with a possibility of 98%. Its superconducting critical temperature is expected to be 218K, with aluminum accounting for 85%, lithium accounting for 10%, oxygen accounting for 3%, titanium accounting for 1.2%, and gallium accounting for 0.8%.

The second probability is 86%, and its superconducting critical temperature is expected to be 203K. Aluminum accounts for 92%, magnesium accounts for 4%, oxygen accounts for 2%, titanium accounts for 0.6%, gallium accounts for 0.8%, and tin accounts for 0.6%.

Moreover, Zhizi also provided the positional structure of these elements in their compounds, which made it convenient for Wang Jiankun to use his superpowers to conduct trial production.

On Sunday, September 1982, 9, Wang Jiankun set up the test environment and made a dry ice cooling system. Then, based on the superconducting material element combination diagram provided by Zhizi, he made two thin wires 26 cm long and 20 mm in diameter.

After connecting the two ends to resistance testers and adding dry ice into the cooling device, we waited for about 1 minute. A cliff appeared on the resistance change curves on the two resistance testers, which means that both materials are superconducting materials.

Although he had some expectations for Zhizi's computational and analytical capabilities, Wang Jiankun still felt a little uncomfortable with just this one success. He also thought that he might need to adjust the structure and element ratios countless times, and find the answer through trial and error.

However, after half a day of calculations, Zhizi successfully found two high-temperature superconducting materials, and these materials were above the temperature of dry ice, which means that the application value of these two materials is very large.

With excitement, Wang Jiankun conducted a series of tests on the two materials, measuring their maximum current and voltage carrying capacity, maximum magnetic field strength, etc.

After completing the test, he named the first superconducting material CD218 and the second material CD203.

Regarding the future uses of these two materials, Wang Jiankun thinks that CD218 is suitable for manufacturing profiles and used in some important components, while CD203 is better for manufacturing wire rods, after all, it contains a higher proportion of aluminum.

After calming down his excitement, Wang Jiankun used his superpowers to trial-produce dozens of wires and profiles of different specifications, preparing to use these materials to manufacture some equipment to see if they would work.

(End of this chapter)