Cutting-edge technology: Starting with individual stealth equipment

Chapter 121: Energy storage time successfully exceeded 30 minutes!

The company representative who asked the question looked puzzled when he saw Lin Chuan acting this way.

Lin Chuan turned to the page on the export market, his gaze lingering there for two seconds.

Then he looked up at the company representative who had asked the question and said, "The Indian market itself is not a problem. It has good geographical conditions, abundant sunshine, and high demand. On the surface, it is indeed a growth market worth paying attention to."

At this point, Lin Chuan abruptly changed the subject: "But the problem isn't in the market, it's in the people. I really can't say anything good about the business reputation of Indians; your company had better keep that in mind."

The company representative who asked the question paused for a moment.

Several people in the meeting room exchanged glances, clearly indicating that they had not considered the Indian market from this perspective before.

Lin Chuan leaned back in his chair, his gaze sweeping across the room: "I would also like to remind all of you business partners who want to do business in India: if you insist on doing business with Indians, do not build factories there, and even more so, do not invest heavily in assets there."

He continued, "The technology, equipment, and core processes should remain in China. Exporting finished products is fine, but don't move the production lines there."

After a pause, Lin Chuan added, "Also, it's best not to expect the Indians to pay you the final installment. The initial payment should cover the costs and profits, including not only manufacturing costs but also transportation costs, insurance costs, and the risk premium from exchange rate fluctuations."

"The equipment will be shipped after the first payment is received."

"Never easily believe any promise of payment terms, no matter how beautifully written the contract is. It will be a nightmare to actually execute. Never do the stupid thing of shipping the goods and expecting the other party to pay on time."

The business partners present exchanged bewildered glances, clearly not expecting Lin Chuan to be so scathing in his assessment of the Indian market.

Lin Chuan concluded by saying, "When doing export business, we need to pay more attention to the country's strategic layout and have sufficient international geopolitical sensitivity. From a national strategic perspective, providing India with a large amount of electricity is tantamount to helping them industrialize. Are we going to let them industrialize and then turn around and steal our country's manufacturing industry? This is clearly not in our country's strategic interests."

The unspoken meaning behind these words was quickly understood by the CEOs of the competing companies present.

The Indian market is viable, but it cannot be made self-sufficient. Electricity is the fundamental driving force and precursor to the operation of modern industry.

If one day in the future the country makes a strategic adjustment and wants to restrict or even lock down India's modern industry, then companies engaged in transnational trade that do not have this strategic awareness and have invested heavily in India will truly be stuck in a double bind.

Lin Chuan glanced at his watch, then stood up.

"The agenda for today has been basically decided; there are only three things."

"First, the output target for next year is 300 billion yuan. Everyone should go back and calculate their own production and scheduling plans, and report the budgeted production capacity demand to Zhao Shuheng before December."

"Secondly, regarding the innovative application of photovoltaics, those who have the opportunity can go to Tala Beach for an on-site inspection and then discuss solutions after they come back."

"Third, we must continue to work together on the export front, maintain a consistent external stance, and avoid internal conflicts."

Lin Chuan concluded by saying, "As for the risks in the Indian market, I'll say it again: business is possible, but caution is advised. Otherwise, you might end up spending all your money in India and not even think about bringing a penny back home. Personally, I have very little confidence in the credit and reputation of Indians."

"Okay, meeting adjourned."

The meeting officially ended at around 4:30 p.m.

Representatives from several companies walked out of the conference room in twos and threes, taking the opportunity to discuss next year's production plans and exchange risk assessments of the Indian market.

Zhao Shuheng was surrounded by representatives from several component manufacturers, who conducted round after round of questions and answers regarding the specific details of next year's production capacity allocation plan.

Lin Chuan had already left the meeting room; the follow-up issues could be left to his subordinates to handle.

For a long time, the photovoltaic industry has not had a good time.

Since 2011, China's photovoltaic industry has undergone a brutal industry reshuffle.

Back then, the market logic was simple and straightforward. Many outsiders wanted to get a piece of the pie, so production capacity was ramped up everywhere, and companies competed to expand production. The growth rate of production capacity far outpaced the growth rate of demand.

The result was a price war across the entire industry.

Component prices have plummeted, squeezing the profit margins of silicon wafers and solar cells to a level thinner than a razor blade.

Leading companies are barely managing to stay afloat thanks to their scale advantage and export tax rebates, while small and medium-sized enterprises are going bankrupt or being acquired in droves.

At that time, the photovoltaic industry, which seemed like a bright and promising new energy sunrise industry, was actually suffering from collective losses and relied entirely on subsidies to survive.

The turning point came after DeepBlue Technology released its singlet fission solar energy technology.

At the press conference in May 2013, when Lin Chuan announced the photoelectric conversion efficiency of 45%, the industry's first reaction was extreme shock and panic.

At that moment, everyone in the industry realized that their traditional polysilicon production lines, which had a conversion efficiency of only 20%, had become obsolete overnight.

However, Lin Chuan did not choose to monopolize the business or destroy his competitors. Instead, he positioned DeepBlue Technology as a technology provider and industry integrator.

Patent licensing, standard setting, capacity allocation, and unified pricing.

DeepBlue Technology focuses on top-level design, redistributing the pie between the manufacturing and application ends so that everyone gets a share, and effectively curbing blind expansion and ineffective competition among peers.

The effects of this model have become apparent this year.

Photovoltaic companies that joined the Deep Blue system all turned a profit in the second half of the year, no longer needing to undercut each other to win orders.

With a unified price floor for exports, foreign buyers are no longer facing a disorganized group of Chinese suppliers, but a technology alliance centered on DeepBlue Technology and operating collaboratively across the entire industry chain.

The irreplaceable nature of singlet fission technology has given this alliance unprecedented pricing power in the global market.

The profit margin of overseas business has soared from single digits to a level that most other manufacturing companies in mainland China envy.

Most importantly, this earning power is sustainable.

DeepBlue Technology earns substantial profits in the global market by leveraging its genuine technological advantages. The impulse to blindly expand production has been effectively curbed by DeepBlue Technology's capacity coordination mechanism, resulting in a balanced supply and demand relationship and a stable price system.

The photovoltaic industry has transformed from a cyclical loss-making quagmire into a virtuous cycle that allows for continuous profit-making, continuous investment in research and development, and continuous technological iteration.

Now, while other traditional manufacturing industries are still struggling with single-digit gross margins, the photovoltaic companies in the DeepBlue ecosystem have begun to enjoy double-digit net profit margins.

The photovoltaic industry has gotten back on track, and Lin Chuan has shifted more of his energy to another direction.

That is the quantum energy storage project.

Inside the Z-7 experimental building at DeepBlue Technology's new headquarters, project team members are continuing to advance according to plan.

The first prototype was packaged and achieved a discharge time of 21.3 seconds. After achieving 8 minutes, it is now working towards the goal of 30 minutes.

While it may seem like just a few times increase, the technical challenges are considerable.

The decoherence mechanism of quantum coherent states is extremely complex, involving dipole interactions between molecules, mode leakage within microcavities, and random perturbations of environmental thermal noise.

Each factor is like a leaky hole, from which energy is lost at nanosecond or even picosecond rates.

To plug these holes one by one, we need to perform fine-grained synergistic optimization in three areas: molecular design, microcavity fabrication, and pumping strategy.

Lu Jing's work has always focused on the molecular level. Although the rigid framework of the QB-102 molecule performs well in suppressing low-frequency vibrations, a new decoherence channel is gradually exposed as the energy storage time increases.

This refers to the "triplet annihilation" of excited states of molecules.

When a large number of dye molecules are in an excited state at the same time, two molecules in the triplet state will undergo energy transfer through collision, causing one of the molecules to jump back to the ground state, and the energy is dissipated in the form of heat.

The rate of this process is proportional to the square of the concentration of excited-state molecules; that is, the higher the energy density, the more deadly this loss channel becomes.

Lin Chuan's solution is to introduce sterically hindered substituents around the QB-102 molecular skeleton, essentially giving each molecule a "shockproof coat".

These substituents act like a miniature fence, strictly locking the shortest distance between adjacent molecules above a safe threshold, thus physically suppressing the probability of triplet-triplet annihilation.

The new molecular designation is QB-103. The synthetic route has two more steps than QB-102, but the yield has stabilized in an acceptable range after repeated optimization.

Chen Zhiyi's microcavity technology is also being iterated in sync.

In her QB-103 molecular tests, she found that the introduction of anti-collision groups effectively suppressed annihilation loss.

However, this also brings a new problem: the increased size of the substituents increases the intermolecular distance, which leads to a decrease in the quantum coupling strength between molecules, and the synergistic enhancement factor of the superabsorption effect drops from about 12 times to 9 times.

To compensate for this loss, the interlayer structure of the microcavities was redesigned, expanding the 24-layer microcavities to 36 layers, while optimizing the cavity-mode coupling efficiency between layers.

The packaging difficulty and process complexity increase dramatically with the number of layers, but fortunately, a 36-layer microcavity stacked module that meets the design requirements was finally produced.

The effectiveness of the dual-pulse pumping scheme has been verified, but with the extension of energy storage time and the increase of target energy density, the simple dual-pulse sequence is no longer sufficient to accurately control the quantum state evolution path of molecular systems.

Inspired by Lin Chuan's suggestion, he designed a multi-pulse sequence.

The first two pulses are still for excitation and coherent control. The function of the third pulse is to perform a "phase lock" on the quantum coherent state. After the coherent state is established, a brief feedback pulse is applied to adjust the quantum phase of the molecular system to a "protective state" that is least sensitive to dephase disturbances.

On November 19, a new round of testing began in the Z-7 experimental building.

This test involved the first joint tuning of four components: the QB-103 molecule, the 36-layer microcavity stacked module, the multi-pulse pump sequence, and the latest version of the discharge circuit.

Lin Chuan did not attend; he went to Beijing to participate in a closed-door industrial policy seminar.

Right now, in the laboratory.

Chen Zhiyi carefully mounted the latest batch of 36-layer microcavity modules onto the optical platform. Each microcavity layer of this module...

She personally checked them all.

Lu Jing has fine-tuned the multi-pulse sequence parameters of the femtosecond laser. The time interval and phase modulation depth of the three pulses are precisely set according to Luo Xiangdong's simulation calculation results.

Zhang Miao and Zhao Yiming have been working on the new generation of discharge circuits for over a month. The impedance matching of this version of the circuit has been dynamically optimized to accommodate the extended energy storage time.

It can extract energy at the fastest speed in the early stage of decoherence of quantum coherent state, while maintaining a stable output voltage in the later stage of decoherence.

Lu Jing began reporting the parameters: "Pump energy is set at 2.8 millijoules, pulse intervals at 260 femtoseconds and 90 femtoseconds."

Immediately afterward, Zhang Miao reported: "The discharge load is connected to a 150-ohm resistor, and the oscilloscope trigger threshold has been set."

Without further hesitation, Luo Xiangdong decisively pressed the start button.

The laser's pulse sequence hit the microcavity module in less than a thousandth of a blink of an eye.

The first pulse excites the QB-103 molecule from its ground state to the first excited state, the second pulse drives the molecular system into a quantum coherent state, and the third pulse locks the coherent state within a precisely calculated phase window.

The molecular array in the 36-layer microcavity absorbed pump energy with unprecedented efficiency under the synergistic effect of quantum entanglement and stored it in the collective mode of molecular excited states in the form of quantum coherent states.

Then, decoherence began.

But this time, the rate of decoherence was slower than in any previous experiment.

The "anti-collision clothing" of the QB-103 molecule effectively suppresses triplet-triplet annihilation, and the cavity mode coupling of the 36-layer microcavity compensates for the loss of coupling strength due to the increase in intermolecular spacing.

The phase locking of the multi-pulse pump sequence creates a protective quantum interference effect during the decoherence process.

Energy is stably output from the discharge circuit in the form of current, and the voltage curve on the oscilloscope extends smoothly.

One minute.

Two minutes.

five minutes.

ten minutes.

Everyone stared intently at the oscilloscope screen, their lips pressed into a thin line.

Fifteen minutes.

twenty minutes.

Twenty-five minutes.

The voltage curve finally began to show a significant decay.

The voltage slowly declined from a steady 1.2 volts, with the rate of decline accelerating at the 27th minute. By around the 29th minute, the voltage had dropped to less than half of its initial value.

Ultimately, the discharge completely stopped at 31 minutes and 04 seconds.

"31 minute and 04 second".

Zhang Miao read out the oscilloscope readings in a voice he himself could hardly believe.

"Energy storage time has officially broken through the 30-minute mark!"

The lab was quiet for a moment, then erupted in cheers as the curve on the oscilloscope flattened out.

"The theoretical value of half an hour has finally been reached."