Chapter 351 Dawn of Lithium Sulfur Era

After arranging Wei Wen's whereabouts, Lu Zhou turned back to the office and continued to prepare his PPT.

During this time, his work will basically revolve around the "theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure".

A week passed like this, and when Lu Zhou finally finished his PPT, he suddenly received a call from Yang Xu.

As soon as the phone was connected, an excited voice came from the receiver.

"We made it! We made it!"

Hearing the excited tone, Lu Zhou froze for a moment, then immediately asked: "Lithium-sulfur battery?"

Holding the phone, Yang Xu nodded vigorously, and said excitedly: "Well! Your idea is right. We used glucose as the precursor and polyaniline-polypyrrole copolymer as the pore-forming agent, and successfully synthesized a compound with a specific surface area as high as 3022m2. /g, and hollow carbon nanospheres with a diameter of only 69nm."

After taking a sip of water, Yang Xu moistened his throat with an excited tone, and continued talking impatiently.

"Then, we mixed the hollow carbon spheres with the sulfur material through the chemical deposition method, assembled them into a battery mold, and tested the performance of the battery pack. The final results are quite gratifying."

"I won't talk about more things on the phone. I have sent the relevant experimental data to your email, so hurry up and take a look!"

"Okay, I'll go right away."

Seeing Yang Xu's expression was so excited, Lu Zhou was also interested, so he turned off the video call and immediately logged into his mailbox.

Within five minutes, he received an email from Yang Xu.

After downloading the attachments in the email, Lu Zhou opened the experimental data roughly organized in pdf format with a professional reader, and then started to read the first part carefully line by line.

In this experimental data, there are not only battery performance test data, but also pictures taken with a scanning electron microscope, and change curves drawn based on various data.

As Yang Xu said, the performance of this new type of material is quite excellent, no wonder his voice is so excited.

Compared with the original hollow carbon nanospheres and the activated carbon nanospheres activated by potassium hydroxide, this new type of hollow carbon spheres and sulfur composites showed a superior performance under the condition that the sulfur content was the same as 70%. cycle performance.

This is true at the macro level, and the changes at the micro level are also quite interesting.

The sulfur ions embedded in the hollow carbon spheres can normally escape from the surface pores of the hollow carbon spheres, and electrochemically react with the lithium ions moving to the positive electrode in an orderly manner, and the generated Li2S2 and Li2S are between the carbon spheres and the carbon spheres. The gaps are quiet, avoiding pore clogging and affecting the electrochemical cycle efficiency.

On the other hand, the formation of long-chain compound LiSn (n > 2) is largely avoided because the charged sulfur ions have limited contact with the lithium ions moving to the cathode.

It is well known that long-chain LiSn molecules that are easily soluble in organic solutions are the culprits that cause the Shuttle effect. If the formation of this product can be reduced from the formation mechanism, it is equivalent to preventing the loss of cathode materials from the source.

Not only that, even if the LiSn (n>2) compound is limitedly generated in the reaction system, due to the surface adsorption of the hollow carbon spheres, this polysulfide compound will be retained in a large amount in the framework of the positive electrode material. Instead of diffusing across the surface of the material into the electrolyte.

With these two layers of insurance, the impact of the shuttle effect has been reduced to a minimum.

After flipping through the section that records the analysis of physical and chemical properties, Lu Zhou looked directly at the section on battery pack testing.

According to the experimental test of multiple battery packs conducted by Jinling Institute of Computing Materials, when the sulfur content is 73%, the ability to inhibit the diffusion of polysulfide compounds into the electrolyte reaches its peak. After 500 cycles, the Coulombic efficiency remained at a fairly high level.

When the sulfur content is 75%, the comprehensive performance of the battery reaches the best level by considering a series of factors such as coulombic efficiency, mass energy density, and volumetric energy density.

Regarding this new type of hollow carbon sphere material, Yang Xu named it HCS-2 material according to the nomenclature established by Lu Zhou.

Compared with the HCS-1 material with relatively limited industrial application value, this new material undoubtedly has more possibilities for industrial production!

"Simply perfect."

Putting the experimental report in his hand on the table, Lu Zhou sighed in his heart, then took out his mobile phone from his pocket, and called Mr. White Sheridan, the general manager of Xingkong Technology, and asked him to start working on international patents immediately. application.

Considering the broad prospect of this material in the field of industrial application, Xingkong Technology will separately register patents on a series of aspects such as the compound, production, use, and mixing ratio of HCS-2 material based on this research result. Establish a complete set of patent barriers.

If the situation is optimistic, he can get the patent number before the end of the month, and then he can start writing the thesis.

As a model of using computational materials methods to solve practical problems, the success of HCS-2 materials will undoubtedly provide an important factual argument for his theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure.

Compared with the carbon-sulfur composite material itself, Lu Zhou is particularly looking forward to this...

...

White's work was very efficient, and it didn't take long for Lu Zhou to go down. All the documents submitted for the patent application were successfully passed.

After getting the patent number, he immediately started writing the thesis.

He also wrote the last paper on HCS-1, and there are ready-made templates that can be applied. The writing of this paper did not take too much time for Lu Zhou, and the entire paper was completed in less than three days.

Considering making a series with HCS-1, this time, he still chose "Science" as the object of submission, and sent the manuscript to the mailbox of the editorial department of "Science".

After submitting the manuscript, Lu Zhou ignored it and began to prepare for the upcoming report at the Max Planck Society in Germany.

However, compared to Lu Zhou's casual attitude when submitting the manuscript, this email made the editorial department of "Science" have a difficult time.

Sprinkling water on Science is the joy of many experts. For example, David Xiao, who has cooperated with Lu Zhou on the theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure, is one of them.

And "Science" also welcomes these big names to pour water on themselves. After all, the equipment of these big names is often enough to make colleagues jealous, the quality of the papers is guaranteed by academic reputation, and it also has its own "flow effect".

However, Professor Lu's "watering" speed of three submissions in the past six months is too amazing...

The problem is not the HCS-2 material itself, but most of the academic editors in the editorial department do not believe that Lu Zhou can make such a major change based on the HCS-1 material in such a short period of time.

Consider the recent paper on carbon-sulfur composites published in JACS and the sensational effect it caused in the energy industry.

Anyone has reason to suspect that Professor Lu may have published experimental results that have not yet been perfected after modifying some experimental data in order to compete with Professor Stanley on the lithium-sulfur battery project.

It may sound risky, but in academia, such a thing is not without precedent.

The editorial department of "Science" couldn't make up its mind, and finally kicked the ball to the reviewers.

The person in charge of reviewing the manuscript for Professor Lu this time is still Professor Bawandi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As before, after accepting the review invitation, this "unbelieving" professor still generously paid out of his own pocket, and repeated the experiment like an honest person according to the experiment report provided by Lu Zhou.

However, whether he believes it or not, the result is in front of him.

This time, he accidentally succeeded again...

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(Third watch! Look, there is no salted fish today! So, that, okay, hand over the monthly pass...)