Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

Unfortunately, Chen Yushan was wrong this time.

After returning to Jinling, the Ark was indeed prepared to start a new round of closure, and was determined to "never step out of the door without resolving Lehman's assumptions”, but there was so much going on in the reality of Nahe.

Yang Xu, director of the Institute of Computing Materials, called him this time for help.

As for the content of the call for help...

It's about a lithium air battery project that was set up two or three years ago.

The ark was also surprising, as he had been able to see from the Institute of Computing Materials report until the end of last year that significant progress had been made in lithium empty battery research.

What brings you to this year, and the whole study is spinning?

Wang Peng drove himself to Jinling Institute of Higher Studies. As soon as he stepped into the lab's ark, he was grabbed by Yang Xu with a painful face.

“Do me a favor! Boss! I can't do this anymore! ”

“Don't be like that. I've got something to say. Aren't I here? Don't make it look like the last words. If you have any problems, let me see if I can help you find a way...”

Looking at Yang Xu's state of mind explosion, it really scared the Ark.

Since he became director of the Institute of Computational Materials, he has led a number of large projects, and solved a number of materials problems for the Jinling Institute of Higher Studies.

Research in frontier areas like this can run into problems that can't be solved. It's not surprising, but it can torture this guy like this...

To be honest, the ark is really curious.

Yang Xu: “Remember that porous silicon-based molecular exchange film I mentioned in the progress report a while ago? ”

After pondering carefully, the Ark recalled some of the contents of the report and nodded.

“Kind of impressed. ”

Taking a deep breath, Yang Xu continued: “Based on experimental analysis, we found that this type of porous silicon material is capable of slowly delivering molecules of a specific diameter size to the low pressure side under a certain barometric pressure difference. Our project team immediately followed up on this piece of research and succeeded in creating an exchange membrane capable of screening gas molecules in the 3.4-3.5A diameter range. ”

Ark: “Isn't that nice? ”

The diameter of the oxygen molecule is exactly 3.46A, which is within the range of this interval in an impartial manner. Although the Ar gas molecule is 3.4, also adjacent to this screening interval, Ar is a rare gas and therefore has no effect.

“Not good at all,” Yang Xu's expression on his face was a bit bitter, shook his head and continued, "The upper and lower boundaries of the screening section are not a fixed value, but linearly vary with the size of the air pressure... you see. ”

After hearing this, the face of the ark finally showed a clear expression.

“I see. I understand your problem. ”

In short, this porous silicon-based molecular exchange film is like a flexible fishing net. The bigger the net, the bigger the net, the more fish it leaks...

As to whether the air pressure on both sides can be maintained at a constant value to ensure that only oxygen passes through the exchange membrane…

Nor is that obviously possible.

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

And not to mention the technical cost of trying to control the barometric differential to such precision that, from a safety point of view, it is absolutely impossible for them to allow the oxidation reduction reaction system in lithium air cells to run on such unstable wires.

The vibrancy of lithium metal. That's no joke. That's the Lord of the explosion without a word!

If they put a little impurity in it, they wouldn't build batteries, they'd make bombs.

“We've been stuck on this bottleneck for half a year," Yang Xu shook his head, "We've tried everything we could...”

Ark thought for a moment and said, "Did you do a simulation? Let me see. ”

“Follow me. ”

Taking the canoe to the computer, Yang Xu grabbed the mouse and dotted it twice. Soon, a three-dimensional diagram of a silicon-based molecular exchange film with a porous mesh superposition was presented in front of the canoe.

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

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

Yang Xu held the right hand of the mouse and knocked his index finger twice.

In the screen, the red dots and green dots distributed on the right side of the molecular exchange membrane begin to aggregate towards the surface of the molecular exchange membrane, as if a dripping outlet had been found.

“… when the surface pressure of the membrane reaches position A in the figure, oxygen begins to move through the molecular exchange membrane towards the gas exchange chamber of the lithium empty battery, however, when the surface pressure continues to rise with the difference in pressure, when it reaches position B, nitrogen also begins to pass through the exchange membrane…”

“But in fact, as the barometric differential graded from A to B, there was already a part of the nitrogen molecule that penetrated inward at a slow rate. ”

In the screen, a red dot marked with nitrogen has been contacted with the lithium anode through the exchange membrane.

Watching Yang Xu simulate the demonstration on the software, the face of the ark appeared with a slight expression.

After the presentation, Yang Xu sighed and leaned on the computer chair.

“I can think of a range of impurities, including water molecules, carbon dioxide, even carbon monoxide, and a few gases, such as weak sulphur dioxide, are well treated, but only nitrogen… is too hard to do, like a bunch of flies to get rid of. ”

Even if nitrogen is typically used as a protective gas, for example in the food industry, it is not possible for lithium empty batteries because nitrogen produces unstable Li3N in the lithium reaction.

If nitrogen enters the system of circulation of the lithium empty battery, I'm afraid the entire battery will be scrapped several times before it runs.

The key to the difficulty with lithium air batteries is that lithium metal is too lively. And the impurities that need to be removed are too lazy.

When IBM didn't believe in this evil, it pulled the prestigious Armadin Research Center into this project, and even used distributed computing technology that now seemed to carry a little black technology, positioning each oxygen atom into the reaction system and distributing it precisely to the lithium anode...

As for the final result, it is also clear.

Even the wealthy and powerful IBM eventually had to believe in this evil, chopping off the whole project like a bottomless hole and firing the squid of the project leader.

While this silicone material from the Institute of Computational Materials does provide a significant glimpse of victory in this direction, if the problem of excluding other impurity gases from passage is not solved, this can only be an interesting and gradual achievement, not more advanced than the idea of putting an oxygen tank on the outside of the battery.

Before finding the Ark, the research team of Yang Xu's Lithium Sky Battery Project had been stuck on this bottleneck for almost six months, and so far no progress had been made.

Intuition tells him that if he can't even do it, the entire Institute of Higher Studies who still has hope of solving this problem is probably just one of the founders of computational material science - Professor Lu.

However, even if the Ark is quite confident in its capabilities, it will not be able to come up with a good solution for a while and a half.

Touched his chin for a long time, and eventually he could only give one vague answer.

“… I'll go back and think about it and let you know if there's any new progress. ”

I couldn't think of a good solution either, Yang Xu has gradually begun to sigh without any hope.

“… thank you! ”

If that were not possible, he could only declare that the technical route had failed and rethink other possible directions.

When Yang Xu heard this “thank you”, the Ark did not realize the deep despair of this "academic leader who has begun to doubt his life”, but rather was somewhat embarrassed to laugh.

“What can I do to thank you...”

If this thing could be studied, it would be another trillion markets!

Even if he is not very interested in money, the value behind this topic is worth a try...