Because he has great confidence in Zhu Bowen's children's digital intuition, and because he has a full understanding of the application limitations of Xiaobao's digital intuition, Shen Yiyi will put Xiaobao in a very important position for his career in his heart. It can be said that Xiaobao's superpower is not only an important weight for her, but also an important secret weapon.

Up to now, in terms of general research topics, Shen Yiyi usually does not come to Xiaobao to "ask for benefits", only in those projects that are really important and very urgent, in order to find a breakthrough, Shen Yiyi will try to use Xiaobao's "innate intuition".

This time, it is obvious that Shen Yiyi is ready to use this "God-given opportunity" in her hand.

From the very beginning of the drone project, Shen Yiyi has set himself a goal for the near future. Of course, these are some projects that are difficult to make breakthroughs in a short period of time with China's comprehensive national strength and scientific research level.

Shen Yiyi has invested a lot of money in the study of electronic technology and components. The funding of 10 million yuan is not a small amount for an individual who has devoted himself to scientific research. You must know that China in this era is not as good as it was when the economy took off in the new century, and the purchasing power of the renminbi has not depreciated so much. Therefore, 10 million at this time is equal to half a billion in later generations. In addition, the salary level of personnel at this time is not high, and Shen Yiyi's direct investment greatly controls the administrative cost, so the role of this 10 million is not an exaggeration to multiply it by ten times.

It is precisely because Shen Yiyi has invested so much that the skills in her hands can be rewarded. The purification process alone plays an immeasurable role in the quality control and cost optimization of product production. Coupled with the matching of the purification process and the lithography machine, it can be said that Shen Yiyi invested 10 million yuan for the subsequent chip manufacturing. The benefits that can be returned are also immeasurable. This is what scientific research calls a virtuous circle.

And where Shen Yiyi wants to use Xiaobao's superpowers this time is actually what she didn't want to do at the beginning, that is, the optimization of the carbon fiber process.

Carbon fiber, abbreviated as CF, is a new type of fiber material with high strength and high modulus fiber content of more than 95%. It is a microcrystalline graphite material made of organic fibers such as flake graphite microcrystalline stacked along the axial direction of the fiber, and obtained by carbonization and graphitization treatment.

Carbon fiber is "soft on the outside and rigid on the inside". The mass is lighter than that of aluminum, but its strength is higher than that of steel, and it has the characteristics of corrosion resistance and high modulus, which is an important material in national defense and military industry and civilian use. It not only has the intrinsic properties of carbon materials, but also has the soft processability of textile fibers, and is a new generation of reinforced fibers.

It is precisely because of its light weight and high strength that it has become the standard equipment on all the world's high-performance and most advanced vehicles.

It can be found on high-end sports cars, as well as sports bikes. Of course. With the use of this new material, the price of the product has also skyrocketed. This effect can be compared with the use of aluminum alloys at the beginning.

Like aluminum alloy, an important application area of carbon fiber is in aircraft. In the world in 1997, when it came to airplanes, aluminum alloy was used in large quantities, and titanium alloy was used in some powerful parts. But in another decade or so, a composite material like carbon fiber will become popular. And such a promising material is now quietly unknown in China. Only Japan's Toray is close to Japan with its dedication to technology. We are constantly developing new carbon fiber products.

Later, when China's large aircraft research program was launched. Although we are aiming at the world's most advanced civil aviation technology, because of the gap in basic materials and processes, such efforts can be described as half the effort. While we are struggling to save 1 percent of the weight of the structure, Americans and Europeans can easily reduce the weight of the aircraft by 10 percent by ordering some high-strength carbon fiber from Toray of Japan. This is the generation gap in technology.

Because of its dual-use characteristics, carbon fiber has also been listed as an embargoed product by the Western world hostile to China. One of the most obvious results of this is that only five percent of the composite materials are used in our larger aircraft. The Airbus A350's latest aircraft has reached 50 percent composite material use. The results of such a large use of carbon fiber are self-evident in terms of fuel economy and environmental friendliness.

Originally, Shen Yiyi originally planned to use ordinary materials for his drone project, that is, the kind of metal materials used in China to make ordinary fighter jets. However, not long after she began her research. She found that such a choice would be problematic in the future.

You must know that drones, especially the Predator-style aircraft she wants to imitate, have high requirements for range and bomb load when performing combat missions. The characteristics of traditional metal materials with high density and heavy weight determine that if this material is mainly used in UAVs, the performance requirements for the engine are not low. The engine has always been a short board of China's industry. Until more than a decade later, this problem has not been effectively solved.

Although Shen Yiyi's drone is not a jet engine, it is just an aircraft that uses turbo pulp, but the efficiency and fuel consumption of that turboshaft engine have already given Shen Yiyi a headache.

The inefficiency of the engines meant that the aircraft would sacrifice a significant portion of its bomb load to carry fuel. Undoubtedly, such a sacrifice had a considerable impact on the combat performance of the aircraft. And the modification of the engine is not an easy task. For this equipment, which basically involves all disciplines of modern science, Shen Yiyi has not considered making an advanced engine in her hands at all. The investment in this matter is too great, and the hope of success is not great. You don't see that the state has invested so much money, but you still have to climb the industrial tree honestly.

Since there is no oil and water to fish on the engine, it seems that the only way to pick the weight from the plane is to pick it up. If the weight reduction of the aircraft is commensurate with the increase in fuel consumption, then there is no doubt that a balance can be achieved in the total weight of the aircraft, and the calculation models that were originally used as input to the design will retain the value of use.

How can we save the structural weight of the aircraft? If Old Man Xiao and Old Man An were there, they would probably still figure out the way of guò calculation and see what oil and water could be fished out of the structure. However, in the absence of high-performance electronic computers, let alone high-efficiency computing software, such a task is simply impossible.

And Shen Yiyi's move to cross the one from the later generations is very simple, directly change the body material.

Of course, the body material that was replaced was naturally the ideal choice in Shen Yiyi's heart - carbon fiber.

And it is precisely because of Shen Yiyi's choice that she put a big shackle on herself: she must first research the applicable carbon fiber.

In fact, most of Shen Yiyi's ministries and bureaus had already involved this part before. The reason why she invested a sum of money, and then gave it to the two major purification research groups of physics and chemistry at the same time, was prepared to make a difference in carbon fiber production.

Shen Yiyi did not take the process route of asphalt-based carbon fiber taken by the Americans in later generations. Because in fact, she probably understood that it was PAN-based carbon fiber that became popular in China later. Although she is not an expert in this area, she thinks that there may be some reason for the end result. It may also be the reason why the technical threshold of asphalt-based carbon fiber is relatively high, so only Americans can afford it.

The research of PAN-based carbon fiber, for Shen Yiyi, another layer of significance is that its technical route for process improvement and improvement coincides with the process route of other products delineated by Shen Yiyi himself. Because achieving high purity, high strengthening, densification and a flawless surface of the precursor is the primary task for the preparation of high-performance carbon fibers. Carbon fiber system engineering starts with the polymerization monomer of the precursor. The quality of the precursor not only determines the properties of carbon fiber, but also restricts its production cost. High-quality PAN precursors are the first and foremost requirements for the manufacture of high-performance carbon fibers.

To put it simply, there is a question of purity. As long as the purity of the precursor can be improved as much as possible in the production and manufacturing, and the mixing of impurities can be reduced, the final carbon fiber will be able to have more ideal technical properties.

Shen Yiyi's favorite thing to do is the kind of thing that gets twice the result with half the effort. Especially in this kind of big research direction, as long as you go right, then it is only a matter of time before you produce results.

Since the beginning of this year, Shen Yiyi has asked Wang Kai to invest 5 million in Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology and began to study carbon fiber. Instead of adopting the nitric acid precursor manufacturing technology that was popular at this time in the original time and space, she asked for a one-step wet spinning technology using dimethyl sulfoxide as a solvent. This technology has greatly improved the performance of China's carbon fiber products after 2010. To this day, Shen Yiyi still remembers the disapproval on the faces of the teachers of the School of Chemical Engineering when she proposed this idea, as well as the incredible expressions on the teachers' faces after the successful laboratory test.

Of course, since it was Shen Yiyi who proposed the technology, naturally Shen Yiyi did not agree with those teachers and students to publish papers on this. It's a technical secret she's going to keep.

After the research team of the School of Chemical Engineering reached a preliminary opinion on the process of preparing carbon fiber, and even studied the equipment that may be needed for each process, Shen Yiyi felt that the time had come for him to need Xiaobao's help. She needs to do everything she can to improve the purity of the precursor. (To be continued......)