Chapter 321 In Academia, Ideas Are the Least Valuable

During this period of time, Lu Zhou has been paying attention to the movements of his colleagues.

On the Arxiv website, papers on hollow carbon spheres and sulfur simple substance hybrid composites show an overall upward trend.

Although biology and chemistry are biased toward engineering fields, an innovative idea is not decisively important, so the enthusiasm of scholars to submit papers to Arxiv is far less than the three directions of pure mathematics, theoretical physics, and computer science. However, this trend of increasing entries still intuitively reflects the direction of the academic world.

At the same time, through searching through professional academic search engines, it can also be clearly found that recent achievements on hollow carbon spheres are constantly emerging.

In contrast, however, these results are not as groundbreaking as HCS-1.

Of course, it is not ruled out that the major research institutions have actually achieved certain results, but for greater ambitions, they kept the staged results in their hands and did not publish them, holding back their big moves in secret.

After all, companies like Umicore and Nichia, although they are happy to cooperate with Lu Zhou when the cost of patent licensing is lower than the cost of illegality, they are obviously more keen to hold the patent rights in their own hands.

From the last meeting with Kalodite, Lu Zhou saw some clues. Without even thinking about it, the Belgian laboratory must have been running at full capacity, ready to grab this high ground.

If this is the case, Lu Zhou has to speed up.

...

In mid-March, after receiving a reply letter from Science, Lu Zhou made an appointment with Yang Xu, who was far away in Jinling, and held a short video conference to discuss the next research plan.

Before the meeting started, Lu Zhou sent the relevant information of HCS-1 to Yang Xu's work mailbox, including data that had been submitted to journals and published, and some that had not yet been made public.

It was precisely because of this that when the video call started, Yang Xu immediately asked, "What is in the email you and I sent?"

Lu Zhou said succinctly: "The new experimental plan and relevant information are all in the mail, and the samples will be sent soon. To put it simply, I need you to help me try to find a method for stably synthesizing HCS-1 materials."

The method of making the HCS-1 material in Sarot's laboratory has a relatively large chance. Even in a strict sense, HCS-1 is only a by-product in the reaction, which can be obtained through centrifugation and further purification.

Even without considering the limited industrial application prospects of the HCS-1 material itself, it is difficult to realize industrial production because of this inefficient production method.

Unless someone is willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lithium battery and pay a fortune to dispose of the piles of waste, which is obviously impossible from an economics point of view.

There are two ways to promote HCS-1 materials, one is to improve the preparation method and reduce the production cost. The other is to improve the material itself.

With HCS-1 as a reference, it is not difficult to find HCS-2 or even HCS-3 that is more suitable for mixing with sulfur element by continuing the research along the existing thinking.

Combining these reasons, Lu Zhou set two directions when formulating research directions for the Jinling Institute of Computational Materials. One is the process improvement of HCS-1 material, and the other is the improvement of HCS-1 material itself.

His requirements for the Jinling Institute of Computational Materials are different from those of Sarot's laboratory, which is to study the topologically folded cage molecule in order to complete the system task.

The former focuses on reality, that is, to solve the shuttle effect.

This is the need of the new energy industry, and also the need of the national new energy strategy. Whether it is out of personal research interests or a commitment to the Huaguo Energy Bureau, Lu Zhou will work hard in this regard.

Yang Xu said troubledly: "You have given me a problem."

Lu Zhou smiled and said, "I believe you can do it."

Yang Xu: "Besides the vague direction, is there a more specific idea?"

Lu Zhou thought for a while and said, "There is a little bit of thinking, I said you should remember it, and I won't send another email."

Yang Xu nodded seriously, and took out a pen and paper.

Lu Zhou took a sip of water and continued, "Glucose."

There was silence between the two for about half a minute.

Yang Xu was stunned: "...glucose?"

Lu Zhou nodded: "That's right, at a specific point, change the precursor from a copolymer of polyaniline and polypyrrole to glucose."

This is the result of his discussion with Sarot. As for how to discuss it, it is naturally through a lot of calculations and experiments, as well as some necessary "scientific intuition".

This sounds a little unreliable, but compared to the "trial and error method", at least there is some theoretical basis.

These theories, though, have yet to be proven.

But in Yang Xu's ears, his brows twitched violently.

"Gone?"

Lu Zhou spread his hands and said in a positive tone: "No more, that's all."

No wonder you don't need to send an email, there is really no need for this content.

Yang Xu complained in his heart, and put away the pen and paper on the table.

After a pause, Lu Zhou continued: "We are not the only ones doing similar research. As far as I know, there are Umicore in Belgium and Nichia Chemical. We are competing with the international chemical giants. I know the task is very difficult. Tough, but I hope you can get over it."

Yang Xu couldn't help but said: "If this is really a potential direction, you shouldn't have said it at the seminar."

Lu Zhou made a helpless expression: "The situation at that time was a bit special, and I didn't expect that they would be so honest and publicize the content of the seminar."

There was one more thing Lu Zhou didn't say.

What surprised him the most was that it was fine if it was made public, yet so many people took it seriously...

...

Hollow carbon spheres are a direction with great potential, and as a direction with potential, there is never a shortage of competitors going the same way.

In academia, a novel idea is not worth much.

In addition to international chemical giants such as Umicore and Nichia, there are many research institutions doing similar research. Some of them cooperate with enterprises, and some take money from the state through vertical projects.

For example, Professor Wang Haifeng is one of them.

While Lu Zhou and Yang Xu were discussing technical issues, he was also busy with the project while he was still in college.

But what he was busy with was not the experiment, but the preparations for the experiment.

About two weeks ago, the subject of the laboratory was finally determined, using the hollow carbon sphere/sulfur composite material as the positive electrode to solve the problem of the diffusion of polysulfide compounds from the positive electrode to the organic electrolyte. Although he doesn't like Lu Zhou very much, he has to agree that hollow carbon spheres are indeed a promising direction.

Now the opening report of the application for funding has been handed in, and if there is no accident, the results will be seen in a few days.

As a scientific research boss, what he needs to do now is to determine more specific research directions and assign research tasks to the scientific research workers.

However, at this moment, his doctoral student, Liu Hong, walked in from outside the laboratory with a constipated expression, holding a brand new journal.

That way, it seems that there is something to say, but you don't know whether it should be said or not.

Looking at his students, Wang Haifeng frowned slightly and asked.

"What happened?"

Liu Hong hesitated for a while, but finally made up his mind.

"Professor... Our subject seems to have crashed with someone."

Hearing this sentence, Wang Haifeng, who was sitting on the office chair, almost choked on his own saliva.

"What? What are you talking about? Crashed?"

WTF?

how can that be!

This project has not yet been applied for, why did it crash?