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

On the Arxiv website, there is an overall upward trend in papers on hollow carbon spheres and sulfur elemental hybrid composites.

Although an innovative idea is not decisive in the fields of biology and chemistry, which are biased towards engineering, so the enthusiasm of scholars to submit papers to Arxiv is far less than that of pure mathematics, theoretical physics, and computer science, but this trend of increasing entries still intuitively reflects the trend of the academic community.

At the same time, through the search of professional academic search engines, it is also obvious that the recent results on hollow carbon balls are emerging.

However, these achievements are not as groundbreaking as HCS-1.

Of course, it is not excluded that major research institutions have actually made certain achievements, but for the sake of greater ambitions, they have not published the phased results in their hands, and they are secretly holding back their big moves.

After all, companies such as Umicore and Nichia Chemical are happy to cooperate with Lu Zhou when the cost of licensing patents is lower than the cost of violating the law, but they are clearly more keen to hold the patent rights in their own hands.

From the last meeting with Carodiet, Lu Zhou saw some clues. Without even thinking about it, the Belgian lab must be at full speed and ready to take the high ground.

If that's the case, Lu Zhou will have to speed up.

……

In mid-March, after receiving a reply from Science, Lu Zhou and Yang Xu, who was far away in Jinling, made an appointment for a brief video conference to discuss the next step of the research.

Before the start of the meeting, Lu Zhou sent the relevant information of HCS-1 to Yang Xu's work mailbox, including the data published in the submitted journal and the data that has not yet been published.

It is precisely for this reason that at the beginning of the video call, Yang Xu immediately asked, "What's in the email you sent to me?" ”

Lu Zhou said succinctly: "The new experimental plan, the relevant information are all in the mail, and the samples will be sent soon. In short, I need your help to try to find a way to stably synthesize HCS-1 materials. ”

The method of preparing HCS-1 materials in Sarot's laboratory is relatively accidental. Even in the strict sense of the word, HCS-1 is just a by-product of the reaction, which is obtained by centrifugation and further purification.

Even without considering the limited industrial application prospects of HCS-1 material, it is difficult to achieve industrial production in the face of this inefficient production method.

Unless someone is willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lithium battery and spend a lot of money to dispose of piles of scrap, this is obviously impossible from a continuing perspective.

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 continue research along the existing lines of thought to find HCS-2 or even HCS-3 that is more suitable for mixing with sulfur elements.

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

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

The former, on the other hand, focuses on reality, i.e., solves the shuttle effect.

This is the need of the new energy industry and the need of the national new energy strategy. Whether it is out of personal research interest or commitment to the National Energy Administration, Lu Zhou will work hard in this regard.

Yang Xu said with a broken head: "You have a problem for me. ”

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

Yang Xu: "In addition to the vague direction, is there a more specific idea?" ”

Lu Zhou thought for a while and said, "There is a point in my thinking, I said you 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 the specific point, change the precursor from the copolymer of polyaniline and polypyrrole to glucose." ”

This is the result of his discussion with Sarot, and as for how it was discussed, it was naturally after a lot of calculations and experiments, as well as some indispensable "scientific intuition".

This may sound a bit unreliable, but there is at least some theoretical basis for it compared to the "trial and error method".

Although these theories have yet to be confirmed.

However, hearing it in Yang Xu's ears, it made his brows twitch fiercely.

"Gone?"

Lu Zhou spread out his hand and said in an affirmative tone: "No, that's all." ”

It's no wonder that you don't need to send an email, it's really not necessary to do that.

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 only doing similar research, as far as I know, there are Belgian Umicore, as well as Nichia Chemical. We are competing with international chemical giants, and I know the task is daunting, but I hope you can overcome it. ”

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

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 straightforward to publicize the content discussed at the seminar so much. ”

There is another sentence that Lu Zhou did not say.

What he didn't expect the most was that it would be made public, and so many people would take it seriously......

……

Hollow carbon ball is a direction with great potential, and as a direction with potential, there is never a shortage of competitors who take the same path.

In academia, just a novel idea is worthless.

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

For example, Professor Wang Haifeng is one of them.

Just when Lu Zhou and Yang Xu were communicating technical issues, he was also busy with the project.

However, he was not busy with the experiment, but with the preparation of the experiment.

About two weeks ago, the laboratory finally decided on the task of solving the problem of diffusion of polysulfide compounds from the positive electrode to the organic electrolyte using a hollow carbon sphere/sulfur composite as the cathode. Although he doesn't like Lu Zhou very much, he has to agree that hollow carbon balls are indeed a very potential direction.

Now that the proposal for funding has been submitted, the results will be seen in the next few days.

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

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

In that way, it's like having something to say, but you don't know whether to say it or not.

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

"What happened?"

Liu Hong hesitated, but finally made up his mind.

"Professor...... Our subject seems to have collided with people. ”

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

"What? What do you say? Crashed? ”

What's that?

How is this possible!

I haven't applied for this subject yet, why did I crash?