Chapter 182: Scientist

Lu Zhou had obviously heard of him as the old man was famous as hell.

It was not an exaggeration to say that Professor Qiu was the leading figure in China’s mathematics world.

He was comparable to the likes of Hua Luogeng and Chen Shengshen.

PhD at 22 years old, associate professor at 25 years old, solving the Calabi Conjecture at 27 years old, winning the Fields Medal at 34… It was like this guy was hacking in real life.

These academic achievements made him one of the most influential mathematicians today. His influence extended to many different fields such as topology, algebraic geometry, general relativity, and even high-energy physics!

The most famous was his proof of the Calabi Conjecture, which directly laid the theoretical foundation of the superstring theory in 1980.

In the theoretical physics world, this old gentleman was widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of superstring theory.

Anyone in the mathematics field knew of this god. Even the people in the theoretical physics field knew of him.

However, Professor Qiu was usually very busy, so it was difficult to see him.

On the other hand, one could gain a lot just from a short conversation with him.

Therefore, when Lu Zhou heard that Professor Lu was bringing him to see Professor Qiu, he immediately asked, “When are we going to Beijing?”

Professor Lu smiled and said, “Around October.”

“…”

Then why are you telling me this now?

Lu Zhou was speechless.

When Professor Lu saw that Lu Zhou did not speak, he said, “I don’t have many projects for you to do right now, so just study on your own. I don’t have much to say regarding mathematics, but for quantum chromodynamics, you still have a lot to learn. I already sent the class schedule to your email. If you want to graduate this year, work hard and go to those classes. I’ll test you at the end of this semester. The exam syllabus is the classes that I’m sending you to.”

When Lu Zhou heard the broad scope of this syllabus, he said, “Professor, this syllabus is a bit too vague.”

Professor Lu smiled and said, “What are you scared of? Believe in yourself!”

…

He had to study hard for quantum chromodynamics, but he had to do something else first.

After Lu Zhou left Professor Lu’s office, he did not hang around. Instead, he went back to his dorm and sat in front of his laptop. He began to research the data from the scanner gun.

He did not know how this battery was produced as the technology was way ahead of its time.

Leaving the negative electrode material aside, even the “oxygen screening diaphragm” on the side of the battery could not be produced with the current technology.

Even if Lu Zhou knew the structure and the parameters of the material, he could not just put this information online and hoped that someone else could build it. There was not a laboratory in the world that could create a diaphragm this thin.

Even if he solved the problem of the lithium dendrite, without this diaphragm, he could not create a lithium-air battery.

Everyone knew that not only would lithium react with oxygen, but it would also react with nitrogen in the air to form lithium nitride crystals that were difficult to reduce. If the water vapor leaked, there would be a violent explosion.

The Japanese people were ambitious on this front, but they had yet found a solution.

If someone could solve the gas screening problem, an oxygen tank could be attached to the lithium-ion battery and this could potentially power cars.

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However, no one wanted their car to blow up.

After some thorough research, Lu Zhou was sure that this battery was the legendary lithium-air battery.

The positive electrode was a gas chamber covered by a gas screening membrane, and the negative electrode was a lithium negative electrode material encapsulated by an electrolyte. However, the electrolyte was not leaking at all, and the negative electrode material had completely turned into lithium oxide.

The design structure was simple and clear, but even if people had the design model, no one could create it. This was because while the technical difficulties were all in the details, most of the problems were regarding the material.

Lu Zhou tried to search online for the plastic in the battery, and could not even find anything.

Fortunately, the material needed to protect the lithium negative electrode and prevent the growth of lithium dendrites was not something too special. Lu Zhou thought it was solvable.

Lu Zhou saw a piece of copper foil under the fully oxidized lithium anode.

Of course, the copper foil was not the key to preventing lithium dendrites. The key was the modified PDMS ¹ nanoporous film covering the copper foil.

There was nothing special about the PDMS material. It was called polydimethylsiloxane, which could be found in skincare products. The nanopore structure of PDMS was the key to solving “breathing problems”.

As for the nonporous film made from PDMS, Lu Zhou guessed that it was made by spin coating it with hydrofluoric acid.

When Lu Zhou saw a specially treated hollow carbon nanosphere under the PDMS film, he guessed that these carbon nanospheres were balancing the lithium dendrite growth.

After around half an hour of playing on his laptop, Lu Zhou leaned back in his chair and sighed, “This task is arduous!”

Even my 20,000 yuan computer can’t handle this… I guess I have to rely on a professional computer to process this data.

He planned to build a laboratory near the University of Jin Ling in order to study this gadget. He would then hire a large group of graduate students and PhD students to work for him. Then, he could even get Xiao Ai to delegate work to these students.

However, right now, there were more important things waiting for him.

Lu Zhou pulled out a piece of A4 paper from his desk and wrote two things on it. He then circled the words “PDMS film” and “carbon nanoball”.

He planned to register patents for these two things. After that, he would register a patent for both as a whole and called it “L1 anode material”.

If he had time, he could even figure out the production process and patent the industrial production process. Even if he did not produce the batteries himself, he could still sell it to others for a profit.

However, Lu Zhou did not choose to do this.

First of all, the design and production of this were out of his abilities. Also, he knew that as a scientific researcher, his fight was in the laboratory, not in a mall or a factory.

As for how to send this technology to the market, he would leave it to the professional engineers to design. He would leave the easy work to the common folks.

It was neither necessary nor efficient to set up factory production.

Factory production and researching products were two different things. He was much better at researching products.

However, it would not be easy to earn patent fees.

He knew that he would have to at least recreate this battery in his laboratory.

Otherwise, he would not be able to explain many things in his patents.

This was part of design experiments.

Once he solved the design experiment, he could happily register the patent.

He would then be making a contribution to society!