After arranging Wei Wen's whereabouts, Lu Zhou went back to his office and continued to prepare his PowerPoint.
During this time, his work would revolve around the "Theoretical Model of the Electrochemical Interface Structure".
A week went by like this. When Lu Zhou finally finished his PowerPoint, he suddenly received a call from Yang Xu.
As soon as the call was connected, an excited voice came from the other end of the phone.
"We did it! We did it! "
When Lu Zhou heard the excited voice, he paused for a second and immediately asked, "Lithium-sulfur batteries?"
Yang Xu was holding the phone and nodded. He then said, "Yeah! Your idea is correct. We used glucose as a precursor and polyaniline copolymer as a pore-forming agent. The copolymer of polypyrrole was used as a pore-forming agent to successfully synthesize hollow carbon nanospheres with a specific surface area of 3022 m2/g and a diameter of only 69 nm. "
Yang Xu drank some water and moistened his throat. He couldn't wait to speak.
"Then, we used a chemical deposition method to mix the hollow carbon spheres with sulfur and assembled them into a battery mold. The battery performance was tested, and the final results were quite gratifying.
"I won't talk about it over the phone. I've sent the relevant experimental data to your email, take a look!"
"Okay, I'll go now."
Seeing how excited Yang Xu was, Lu Zhou was also interested. He turned off the video call and immediately logged into his email.
In less than five minutes, he received an email from Yang Xu.
After Lu Zhou downloaded the attachment from the email, he used a professional reader to open the experimental data that was roughly organized into pdf format. He began to carefully read the first part line by line.
Not only did this experimental data include battery performance test data, but it also included pictures taken with a scanning electron microscope, as well as curves drawn based on various data.
Just like Yang Xu said, the performance of this new material was quite good. No wonder he was so excited.
Compared to the original hollow carbon nanospheres and activated carbon nanospheres prepared by potassium hydroxide activation, this new hollow carbon nanosphere and sulfur composite showed superior cycle performance under the condition that the sulfur content was the same as 70%.
This was the case on a macroscopic level, but the changes on a microscopic level were also quite interesting.
The sulfur ions embedded in the hollow carbon spheres could escape from the surface pores of the hollow carbon spheres and undergo electrochemical reactions with the lithium ions moving to the positive electrode in an orderly manner. The generated Li2S2 and Li2S were silent in the gap between the carbon spheres, which prevented the pore blockage from affecting the electrochemical cycle efficiency.
On the other hand, because of the limited contact between the charged sulfur ions and the lithium ions, the formation of the long chain compound LiSn (n > 2) was avoided to a large extent.
It was well known that the long-chain LiSn molecules, which were easily soluble in organic solutions, were the culprits of the shuttle effect. If they could reduce the production of LiSn molecules, it would be equivalent to preventing the loss of positive electrode materials.
Not only that, even if a limited number of LiSn (n > 2) compounds were formed in the reaction system, due to the surface adsorption of this hollow carbon sphere, this polysulfide compound would be retained in the framework of the cathode material instead of diffusing through the surface of the material into the electrolyte.
With these two layers of insurance, the impact of the shuttle effect had been minimized.
Lu Zhou flipped through the section that recorded the physicochemical property analysis. He then looked at the battery test section.
According to the Jinling Institute of Computational Materials, when the sulfur content was 73%, the ability to inhibit the diffusion of polysulfide compounds into the electrolyte reached its peak. After 500 cycles, the Coulomb efficiency was still maintained at a very high level.
When the sulfur content was 75%, a series of factors such as the Coulomb efficiency, mass energy density, and volumetric energy density were taken into account, and the battery performance reached its optimal level.
Yang Xu named this new hollow carbon sphere material the HCS-2 material according to Lu Zhou's previous naming principle.
Compared to the relatively limited industrial application value of the HCS-1 material, this new material undoubtedly had more industrial production potential!
"It's perfect."
Lu Zhou placed the experiment report on the table and took out his phone. He called the general manager of Star Sky Technology, Mr. White Sheridan, and told him to immediately start the international patent application.
Star Sky Technology considered the broad prospects of this material in the industrial field. Star Sky Technology would use this research results to register patents on a series of aspects of the HCS-2 material's compounds, production, uses, and mixing ratio with sulfur. This would establish a complete set of patent barriers.
If everything went well, he would be able to receive the patent number before the end of the month, and then he could start writing the thesis.
As a model for using computational materials methods to solve practical problems, the success of the HCS-2 material would undoubtedly provide an important factual argument for his theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure.
Compared to the carbon-sulfur composite material itself, Lu Zhou was especially looking forward to this …
…
White's work efficiency was very high. Not long after Lu Zhou gave the order, all of the patent application documents were successfully submitted.
After receiving the patent number, he immediately began to write the thesis.
The last thesis on HCS-1 was also written by him, so he had a ready-made template to use. This time, writing the thesis didn't take too much time for Lu Zhou. He finished the entire thesis in less than three days.
Considering that this was a series with HCS-1, he still chose Science as the submission target. He sent the thesis to the Science editorial department's email.
After submitting the thesis, Lu Zhou didn't bother with it anymore. He began to prepare for the upcoming report at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
However, compared to Lu Zhou's casual attitude when submitting the thesis, this email made the Science editorial department feel awkward.
Writing in Science was a hobby of many big names. For example, David Shaw, who worked with Lu Zhou on the theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure, was one of them.
Science also welcomed these big names to write their thesis. After all, these big names often had enough equipment to make their peers jealous. The quality of the thesis was guaranteed, and it also had its own "traffic effect".
However, Professor Lu's speed of submitting three times in half a year was astonishing …
The problem wasn't the HCS-2 material itself. It was that most of the academic editors in the editorial department didn't believe that Lu Zhou could make such a major change in the HCS-1 material in such a short period of time.
Considering the recent JACS paper on carbon-sulfur composites, as well as the sensation it caused in the energy industry …
Everyone suspected that Professor Lu might have published incomplete experimental results in order to compete with Professor Stanley on the lithium-sulfur battery project.
This may sound risky, but in the academic community, such a thing was not unprecedented.
The Science editorial department couldn't make up their mind, so they gave the ball to the reviewer.
This time, the reviewer for Professor Lu was Professor Bawendi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Just like before, this "unbelieving" professor accepted the review invitation. He generously used his own money and repeated the experiment according to the experiment report provided by Lu Zhou.
However, regardless of whether he believed it or not, the results were in front of him.
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