Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

Unfortunately, this time Chen Yushan guessed it wrong.

After returning to Nanjing, Lu Zhou was indeed ready to start a new round of retreat, and indeed decided to “do not solve GFB Riemann’s Conjecture and never step out of the door”, but in reality, the real thing is Too much.

The caller who called for him this time was Yang Xu, the director of the Institute of Computational Materials.

As for the content of the rescue…

It is about the lithium-air battery project that was established two or three years ago.

Lu Zhou is also very surprised. Until the end of last year, he has been able to see from the report of the Institute of Computational Materials that there has been significant progress in lithium-ion battery research.

How come this year, the whole study is going downhill?

Wang Peng drove himself to the Nanjing Institute of Advanced Studies. Just after entering Lu Zhou in the laboratory, he was caught in the painful Yang Xu.

“Help me! Oh! I have… no!”

“Don’t be like this. If you have something to say, don’t I come here? Don’t make it like the last words, if there is any problem, let me see if I can help think about it…”

Looking at the appearance of Yang Xu’s mentality explosion, he really shocked Lu Zhou.

Since this guy became the director of the Institute of Computational Materials, he has also led many large projects, and he has solved many problems in Material Science for the Nanjing Institute of Advanced Studies.

Research in the frontier field like this will not be surprising when it comes to uncertain problems, but the problem of tormenting this guy into this way…

To be honest, Lu Zhou is really curious.

Yang Xu: “Remember the porous silicon-based molecular exchange membrane that I mentioned in the research progress report some time ago?”

Lu Zhou thought about it, but recalled some of the contents of the report, nodded said.

“A little impression.”

Deep took a deep breath, Yang Xu continued: “According to experimental analysis, we found that this type of porous silicon material under a certain pressure difference, the gas on the high pressure side can slowly transport molecules of a specific diameter to the low pressure side. Our The project team immediately followed up on this piece of research and successfully produced an exchange membrane that was able to screen gas molecules in the 3.4-3.5A diameter range.”

Lu Zhou: “Isn’t that good?”

The diameter of the oxygen molecules is exactly 3.46A, just within the range of this range. Although the Ar gas molecule is 3.4, this screening interval is also taken, but Ar is a rare gas, so there is no effect.

“It’s not good at all,” Yang Xu’s face was bitter, and he shook his head and continued. “The upper and lower boundaries of the screening interval are not a fixed value, but vary linearly with the magnitude of the air pressure… you know.”

Upon hearing this sentence, Lu Zhou’s face finally showed a clear expression.

“originally is this way, I understand your question.”

In short, this porous silicon-based molecular exchange membrane is like a fishing net full of elasticity. The bigger the mesh of the fishing net, the more a fish that escaped the net…

As for whether or not the air pressure on both sides can be maintained at a constant value to ensure that only oxygen is exchanged through the membrane…

This is obviously impossible.

Yang Xu has already made it clear that the movement of the upper and lower boundaries of the entire screening interval varies linearly with changes in the pressure difference between the two sides.

Not to mention the technical cost of controlling the pressure difference to such a precise degree, from the safety point of view, it is absolutely impossible for them to allow the redox reaction system in the lithium air battery to run on such an unstable steel wire. .

The liveliness of lithium metal is not a joke, but the friction remark is the mainstay of the explosion!

If this is a little bit of impurities coming in, they will not make a battery, but a bomb.

“We have been stuck on this bottleneck for half a year,” Yang Xu shook his head. “We have tried all the methods we have tried…”

Lu Zhou thought for a moment and said, “Is there a simulation? I am.”

“follow me.”

With Lu Zhou walking to the computer, Yang Xu held the mouse twice, and the three-dimensional composition of the silicon-based molecular exchange membrane of a porous mesh superposition structure appeared in front of Lu Zhou.

Yang Xu explained while pointing to the image on the screen.

“We tried to increase the surface pressure on one side of this exchange membrane, and molecules of a certain diameter would pass through the channels in the molecular exchange membrane at a certain rate…”

Said, Yang Xu holding the right hand of the mouse, the index finger knocked twice.

In the screen, the red and green dots distributed on the right side of the molecular exchange membrane, as if they had found the pouring outlet, began to gather toward the surface of the molecular exchange membrane.

“…When the surface pressure of the membrane reaches the A position in the figure, oxygen begins to move through the molecular exchange membrane to the gas exchange chamber of the lithium-ion battery. However, when the surface pressure continues to rise with the pressure difference, it reaches the B position. At the same time, nitrogen will also begin to pass through the exchange membrane…”

“However, in fact, when the pressure difference changes from A to B, a part of the nitrogen molecules have penetrated inward at a slow rate.”

In the screen, the red dot marking the nitrogen gas has been in contact with the lithium negative electrode through the exchange membrane.

Looking at Yang Xu’s simulation on the software, Lu Zhou’s face showed a dignified expression.

After the demonstration, Yang Xu sighed and leaned against the computer chair.

“I can think of a series of impurities including water molecules, carbon dioxide, and even carbon monoxide. There are also some gases such as sulfur dioxide, which are weak in content, but they are also very good. But it is too difficult. It’s like a group of flies that can’t go away.”

Even though nitrogen is normally used as a shielding gas, such as in the food industry, it is not possible for lithium-ion batteries because nitrogen reacts with lithium to form unstable Li3N.

If nitrogen is allowed to enter the circulation system of the lithium-ion battery, I am afraid that the entire battery will be abolished after several times of operation.

The key to lithium-ion batteries is that lithium metal is too active. The impurities that need to be eliminated are too lazy.

At the beginning, IBM did not believe in this evil. It took the famous Almaden Research Center to work on this project, and even used distributed computing technology with black technology elements to locate each entry system. Oxygen atoms and distribute them precisely to the lithium negative electrode…

As for the final result, it is also obvious.

Even the rich and imposing, powerful IBM eventually had to believe in this evil, cut the entire project like the bottomless pit, and fired the project leader’s squid.

Although the silicon material of the Institute of Computational Materials has indeed brought a lot of glory to the research in this direction, if it can’t solve the problem of eliminating the passage of other impurity gases, this can only be regarded as an interesting phased result. It is no more advanced than the idea of ​​putting an oxygen tank on the outside of the battery.

Before finding Lu Zhou, Yang Xu’s research team for the lithium-ion battery project had been stuck on the bottleneck for almost half a year, and no progress has been made so far.

Intuition tells him that if he can’t even do it, the entire institute of higher learning who still has the hope to solve this problem, I am afraid that only one of the founders of Material Science, Lu-Professor, is left.

However, even though Lu Zhou is quite confident in his ability, he can’t think of a good solution for a while.

Touch the chin has been pondering for a long time, and eventually he can only give an ambiguous reply.

“…I will go back and ponder, if there is new progress, I will tell you again.”

Seeing Lu Zhou can’t think of a good solution, Yang Xu has gradually begun to sighed without any hope.

“…I thank you!”

If it is not possible, he can only declare that this technical route has failed, and instead think about other possible directions.

When I heard Yang Xu’s “thank you”, Lu Zhou did not realize the desperation in the heart of the “scientific leader who has already begun to doubt life”. Instead, she was somewhat embarrassed to laughed.

“What are you thankful for?”

If this stuff can be studied, it can be another thousand trillions of markets!

Even if he is not very interested in money, the value behind this subject is worthy of his trial…