Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.
Institute of Computational Materials.
Yang Xu brought Lu Zhou into the laboratory. He sat in front of a computer and pulled up the test data.
He spoke emotionally, "This is incredible …"
Lu Zhou didn't ask why it was incredible. Instead, he asked, "What material is that?"
"Silver." Yang Xu took a deep breath and said, "Specifically, silver and graphene!"
"Silver and graphene?" Lu Zhou looked at Yang Xu and said, "That's it?"
In his memory, he seemed to have seen a similar thesis.
However, because he didn't know much about metal materials, he couldn't remember where he read it.
Honestly, when he heard that there were only two materials, he was a little disappointed. Even though he knew that even advanced civilizations wouldn't spend so much money on a wire, he didn't expect it to be this ordinary.
However, Yang Xu looked at him speechlessly.
"What do you mean just two materials? This is already nutty, okay?"
As he spoke, as if to prove this point, he pressed a few buttons on the keyboard.
Soon after, a transmission electron microscope image appeared on the screen.
On the image, black and gray patches were intertwined, forming a neat and delicate texture in the two-dimensional space. This completely revealed the secrets of the silver wire at the nanometer scale.
Yang Xu pointed at several key areas on the image and didn't explain much. He said, "Look at these places and you'll understand."
Lu Zhou leaned closer to the computer screen and looked in the direction of Yang Xu's finger.
He saw a near-spherical silver atom with a particle size between 1-5 nm, and a single-layer graphene with a similar horizontal size.
Soon after, Lu Zhou's eyebrows furrowed.
Even though he didn't know much about metal materials, he could tell that something was unusual.
This wasn't a question of whether it was good or not.
It was a question of whether it could be done …
In order to make a graphene alloy based on metal materials, the metal nanoparticles and graphene had to be bonded.
Currently, only the unpopular powder metallurgy technology could do this. However, even with powder metallurgy technology, there was no way to bond graphene and silver nanoparticles to such a perfect degree.
It was no exaggeration to say that the silver thread, which was as thin as a hair, was simply a work of art.
Seeing that Lu Zhou didn't say anything, Yang Xu continued in an emotional tone.
"Powder metallurgy is relatively cutting-edge and relatively unpopular. I don't know much about it. However, in the case of 3D printing technology, the best metal powder was about 10,000 mesh, which was about 13 microns. Some nano-ceramic materials may use a finer powder, but it's still at the micron level. "
"Although some laboratories can achieve ultra-fine powders of 20nm and below … This kind of powder can't be stored in a normal environment, let alone used to bond graphene fragments."
Not only was it difficult to prepare them, but it was also difficult to filter them and preserve them.
The higher the mesh of the metal powder, the smaller the particle size, the easier it was to oxidize, and it was extremely easy to agglomerate.
The only two possible solutions to the problem were to either use a special method to disperse the powder during smelting, or directly mix it with graphene debris and spray it on the substrate while producing the powder.
Yang Xu leaned back in his chair and sighed.
"As you can see, the difficulty of this thing isn't in the technology itself, but in the production process. In fact, because of the rapid development of the electronics industry, theses on this type of composite materials were endless a few years ago.
"For example, indium tin oxide, which is used to make mobile phone screens, is fragile. Many scholars proposed to combine silver nanowires and graphene to develop a new generation of flexible screens. According to the limited experimental data, the mechanical properties of this material are quite excellent, and the resistivity is far lower than that of ordinary metals … When I was a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there was a laboratory that did research on this. "
Lu Zhou looked away from the screen and asked, "What happened then?"
Yang Xu shrugged and said, "I don't know, but I'm guessing the project probably didn't go forward. The price of indium tin oxide isn't cheap, but silver is better. Even if this kind of technology was made, no one would use it. "
Lu Zhou had a strange expression on his face.
If using silver to make a mobile phone screen was extravagant, then what about using silver to make a wire?
However, if space travel could be achieved, then space mining wouldn't be difficult. Lu Zhou was relieved.
For a civilization with this technology, the value of silver was only a little bit higher than copper.
Yang Xu looked at the data on the computer screen with curiosity in his eyes.
After hesitating for a bit, he finally couldn't help but ask, "Where did you get this thing?"
He felt the same way as Lu Zhou.
In his opinion, the thumb-length silver wire was like a work of art!
It was no exaggeration to say that its existence completely changed the industry's understanding of metallurgy technology.
However, Lu Zhou didn't answer his question. He simply said, "It's a state secret, just help me reverse engineer it. It's not good for you to know too much."
Lu Zhou didn't explain too much because there was no need to.
Even without the Ling Yun medal, he didn't need to explain anything to anyone.
Even if he needed to explain something, he only needed to explain it to one person.
This kind of thing could only happen under one circumstance.
Which was that his actions had seriously endangered national security.
Apart from that, it wasn't an exaggeration to say that even those who were responsible for his security and those who were responsible for keeping his secret had no right to investigate the 'secret' itself.
However, when Lu Zhou saw Yang Xu's surprised expression, he secretly rejoiced.
Fortunately, he only cut a small piece of the sample.
If this guy knew that Lu Zhou had a bunch of these things, he might be shocked to the core.
"Okay then …"
Yang Xu shrugged helplessly and reluctantly accepted this perfunctory explanation.
If it was related to state secrets, it wouldn't be good for him to know too much.
Yang Xu paused for a second and spoke.
"But I'm afraid it won't be easy to reverse engineer this thing. At least, I don't know how to do it. "
Lu Zhou: "What if we expand the silver nanoparticles to the micron level?"
Yang Xu hesitated for a second and said, "It's still difficult, but if you're interested, we can give it a try. But … "
Lu Zhou: "But?"
"But what's the point of doing this?" Yang Xu asked, "Even though I admit that this Ag/GF material has excellent resistivity characteristics, considering the price of silver, its industrial application prospects are almost zero."
Even if they spent a lot of effort to understand the mystery, they would only be able to produce a "beautiful" paper at most.
This kind of thing might attract the interest of normal researchers, but for Lu Zhou and Yang Xu, it didn't mean much.
After all, unlike mathematical physics, materials science itself was an applied discipline …
Lu Zhou thought about Yang Xu's question for a long time.
Honestly speaking, he was a little hesitant about whether or not this technology was worth it.
However, in the end, Lu Zhou made up his mind and spoke.
"I can't answer your question, at least not right now."
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