Modu, Institute of Nuclear Research, Academy of Sciences.

Xu Chuan found an office and took the selected eight scientific researchers to explain to them the theory of the 'atomic cycle' and the research and development basis of new radiation-resistant materials, as well as some points that need to be paid attention to in the preliminary experiment.

“...... For radiation-hardened materials, the ionization effect carried by strong nuclear radiation itself is the biggest problem, which can destroy the grain boundaries, molecular structure, and neutral atoms of the material..... etc., thus causing embrittlement, accelerated creep, phase instability, accelerated corrosion and other consequences. ”

"The atomic cycle technology is a theory based on ionizing radiation and ionizing effects."

"Under the premise of ensuring the maximum grain size of the radiation-resistant material, this theory will reduce the difficulty of grain boundary formation by adding some compounds to improve the charge distribution of the space charge layer, control the morphology of grain boundary phases, and form grain boundary channels conducive to ion migration, so as to ensure that the material can self-recover its structure after being ionized by nuclear radiation and have a longer radiation confrontation time......"

“.........”

Although these things have been written in great detail in the previous papers, he still chooses to go through them again, and by the way, solve some of their doubts.

On the one hand, it is to cultivate talents, and on the other hand, it is to speed up the progress of subsequent experiments.

In front of the projection screen, Xu Chuan continued to explain the key details of the 'atomic cycle' theory, and in the conference room, nine scientific researchers, including Han Jin, listened carefully.

Since Jing Kangle and Sun Heng were 'fired', the enthusiasm of the entire small team has increased a lot.

It was clear to everyone in an instant that this young looking bull had done everything he said.

He said that there is a test, and the test really comes, and he said that the test determines whether they can join the team or not, and people who don't pass the test really don't come in even if they pass the interview.

In fact, in the workplace, it is the most basic requirement to do your own things conscientiously, but many people can't do it now.

is like acting in the entertainment industry, memorizing lines and memorizing lines can be said to be the most basic requirement, but some little fresh meat who has no acting skills and doesn't want to work hard, relying on their high net worth and nao residual fans, they started 123456789.....

This is extremely unhealthy for the whole environment.

Xu Chuan doesn't have the ability to change the overall environment, but he has the ability to ensure that his small group is in a healthy state.

......

"Professor, I have a question."

In the conference room, a researcher raised his right hand cautiously and nervously.

Xu Chuan followed the voice and looked over, and it was a researcher who looked relatively young who raised his hand.

He nodded, motioning for the other party to ask, "Please speak." ”

The researcher stood up a little nervously, took two deep breaths to suppress the tension in his heart before asking.

"Professor, you mentioned earlier that the grain boundary effect of materials is used to combat nuclear radiation, but the grain boundary effect is exclusive to ceramic materials, if this is the case, other subsequent materials, including some soft countermeasure materials, may not be able to have this advantage."

Xu Chuan smiled and said, "I'm glad you can have your own thoughts and put them forward." ”

"The grain boundary effect is indeed a property exclusive to ceramic materials, but it is not impossible to apply to other materials."

"We all know that adversarial materials are bombarded with high-energy particles, such as neutrons, γ particles, in a service environment, resulting in a large number of off-site damage, including vacant and self-interstitial atoms."

"These out-of-place defects and the corresponding clusters degrade or even fail the properties of the material, restricting the stability of the material."

"In the past, multi-scale simulations often focused only on basic atomic processes, such as diffusion, segregation, and recombination, when revealing the microscopic mechanism of defect-interface interaction."

"However, under actual service conditions, the countering material often needs to withstand a certain dose of cumulative irradiation ......."

While explaining, Xu Chuan wrote a line on the blackboard in the conference room.

[Cumulative off-site damage of nanomaterials--grain boundary gap loading and grain boundary irradiation effect.] 】

After writing, he turned his head and looked at the scientific researcher who asked the question with a smile, and continued: "Traditional adversarial materials, in the face of high-energy nuclear radiation irradiation, do have various defects caused by ionizing radiation. ”

"But when we reduce the structure of the material to the nanometer level, everything will be different."

"I have seen and studied this in Princeton, and a lot of research materials and experimental data have shown that nanostructured materials, especially nanocrystalline materials, have good radiation resistance."

"This is due to the fact that the large number of grain boundaries in these materials is able to capture irradiated defects and facilitate their recombination, thereby reducing the accumulation of irradiation damage in the material matrix."

"For example, when the grain boundaries of iron metal are reconstituted by nanotechnology, the iron grain boundaries have the ability to effectively capture vacant and self-interstitial atoms and promote their recombination under the condition of higher irradiation temperature or lower dose rate, and reduce the accumulation of irradiation defects in the grain, so as to achieve the ability to repair irradiation damage."

"In addition, when the radiation gap of the iron grain boundary accumulates to a certain concentration, part of the gap disappears and a new grain boundary structure phase is formed during the grain boundary relaxation process. With the increase of irradiation dose, the gap continues to accumulate, and with the local movement of grain boundaries, it gradually returns to a state close to the initial state. ”

"What that means, I think you all know it."

As he spoke, Xu Chuan turned his gaze to the researcher who was still standing, and looked at him with a smile.

"This means that this resistant material will not only have grain boundary corrosion when exposed to nuclear radiation, but also achieve grain boundary repair!"

The researcher who was standing blurted out without even thinking about it, with a look of disbelief.

Hearing this, the other researchers in the conference room, including the person in charge, Han Jin, all had various emotions on their faces, such as disbelief, confusion, and doubt.

Can nuclear radiation repair the grain boundaries of materials?

Are you kidding?

The strong ionization characteristic of nuclear radiation itself can destroy the molecular atomic structure of almost all materials, resulting in pores in the grain boundaries of materials, and the loss of atoms and defects.

Even containers made of high-density and highly stable metals such as lead can gradually cause problems when exposed to nuclear radiation for a long time.

This can be said to be a rule.

If this were not the case, mankind would not be unable to find a perfect way to deal with nuclear waste when faced with it.

Nuclear radiation is inherently so destructive that it can eat away at all materials.

But now Xu Chuan is telling them that nuclear radiation is not only destructive, but also repairable.

I have to say that this is an extremely shocking piece of news, and for a while, everyone fell into surprise and confusion.

.......

Looking at the researcher in the conference room, Xu Chuan smiled.

In his last life, he did an experiment on "Mechanism of Accumulation and Conversion of Nuclear Energy β Radiant Energy" at an atomic energy experimental institution in California, USA, and when he first came to this conclusion, he couldn't believe it.

However, after repeated verification of this conclusion and confirmation that there were no problems, it was finally determined that nanomaterials manufactured by special means have more advantages than conventional materials in resisting nuclear radiation.

It was this unexpected discovery that led him to perfect the 'atomic cycle' technique, develop different counter-materials, and find a technology that could reuse discarded nuclear materials.

】

It can be said that the cumulative off-site damage of nanomaterials, grain boundary gap loading and grain boundary irradiation effect, is the real core of the technology of 'nuclear energy β radiant energy aggregation and conversion power mechanism'.

Originally, he was going to let other researchers discover it by themselves in the process of material experiments, but he didn't expect that someone would be keenly aware of this aspect now.

This made him quite interested, and he also wrote down the name of the researcher in his heart, and prepared to focus on training in the future.

For the researcher, this is an opportunity.

Perhaps others in this group of eight have also noticed this problem.

But in many cases, opportunities are also to be fought for by themselves.

Burying the problem in the bottom of your heart has no value other than bothering yourself.

But when you bring it up, sometimes you can not only get answers, but also appreciation.

......

The last day of September passed in Xu Chuan's explanation.

During the October Golden Week, Xu Chuan gave the researchers of the nuclear energy R&D team a holiday, on the one hand, it was the National Day, and there would be a regular holiday, and on the other hand, it was to let them digest the various knowledge he explained two days ago.

As for himself, he returned to Jinling.

The nuclear energy R&D team is on holiday, the Chuanhai Materials Laboratory is not on holiday, and the 11th Golden Week is in a state of overtime.

No way, he's on time.

The start of multi-line work doomed him to have little time to rest.

On the basis of the perfect theory + Xu Chuan, the 'prophet', the research and development of lithium battery electrolyte materials and artificial SEI films has entered the formalization.

Xu Chuan collected the content of the work of the past few days and read it, and also joined the experiment.

He was involved in the development of artificial SEI films.

Compared with electrolytes, artificial SEI films are the focus.

It is used to solve the largest and most difficult 'lithium dendrite' problem in lithium batteries.

In the lithium battery industry, lithium dendrite is the biggest problem, and it is also the fundamental problem that affects the safety, stability and electromagnetic capacity of lithium-ion batteries.

It is a dendritic metal lithium formed when lithium ions are reduced during the charging process of lithium batteries, which generally appears at the negative electrode of the battery.

The growth of lithium dendrites will lead to the instability of the electrode and electrolyte interface during the cycling process of lithium-ion batteries, destroying the resulting solid electrolyte interface (SEI) membrane. It can even puncture the separator and cause the lithium-ion battery to be short-circuited internally, causing the thermal runaway of the battery to cause a combustion explosion.

Moreover, lithium dendrites will continuously consume the electrolyte during the growth process and lead to the irreversible deposition of lithium metal, resulting in the formation of dead lithium and low coulombic efficiency.

In reality, the battery will gradually decrease after a long time.

Nowhere is this more evident than on mobile phones.

The battery of a newly purchased mobile phone can support one day of operation, but after a year or two, the battery can only last half a day or even less.

Artificial SEI thin films are one of the ways to solve the problem of lithium dendrites.

It solves this problem by preventing lithium ions from accumulating at the negative electrode, preventing it from forming lithium dendrites.

In this way, the anode material of the lithium battery can be replaced with lithium metal with higher capacitance.

Not to mention how many times the battery capacity of lithium batteries can be increased after solving lithium dendrites, even if it is only doubled, it can make the whole world crazy.

Doubling the energy density of current batteries means doubling the range of various appliances without changing the shape, increasing the load, or sacrificing comfort.

The standby time of mobile phones and computers has been doubled, and the range of electric vehicles has been doubled......

With such an alluring prospect, mobile phone suppliers and EV manufacturers will go completely crazy.

As for the electrolyte, it was left by Xu Chuan for the next generation of lithium batteries.

After solving the problem of lithium dendrites, the lithium-ion batteries on the market can be upgraded to lithium metal batteries, and after lithium metal batteries, there are lithium-sulfur batteries and lithium-air batteries with higher energy density.

The continuous innovation from generation to generation is enough for him to completely control the huge market of lithium batteries.

......

On the National Day, Xu Chuan helped Yu Zhen, who was in charge of the research and development of artificial SEI thin film materials, to improve the research and development progress in the Chuanhai Laboratory, and he would be busy until 90 o'clock every night.

Of course, there must be overtime pay for overtime, and he is not the kind of black-hearted capitalist who can't do unpaid overtime.

In addition to the 5 times overtime pay of 3+2, Xu Chuan also promised compensatory leave.

As long as the relevant R&D project is completed, the corresponding personnel can take paid leave, and they can make up for as many days as they work overtime.

With such benefits, the scientific researchers in the laboratory are all like chicken blood, and they can survive better than Xu Chuan.

However, in this case, the research and development of both electrolyte materials and artificial SEI thin film materials are progressing quite quickly.

On the basis of detailed theories, under the leadership of Xu Chuan, the Chuanhai Institute of Materials has manufactured the synthetic materials required for the first generation of artificial SEI films in small batches.

.......

Late at night, in the laboratory of the Chuanhai Institute of Materials, Xu Chuan finished the last task in his hand, sorted out the experimental equipment, took off his mask and goggles, and said to the other people who were busy in the room:

"That's all for today's work, let's go back and rest early, and tomorrow we will start the synthesis of artificial SEI films......

Before he could finish his sentence, the door of the laboratory was hurriedly pushed open.

Xu Chuan turned his head to look, and he was a little surprised by the person who broke in, and it was actually Liu Gaojun, the president of NTU, and his mentor Chen Zhengping.

Seeing Xu Chuan, the two of them lit up, and quickly walked over, gasping and saying in unison: "You kid can't get through the phone if you haven't slept!" ”

Looking at the two people who hurriedly broke in, Xu Chuan looked at the two of them suspiciously, and asked, "I'm doing experiments here, and my phone is on the blocking mode, so I didn't pay much attention to it, what's wrong?" Is something wrong? ”

Hearing this answer, Chen Zhengping said excitedly: "Do you know that you have won the award!" The winning calls have been made to the school! ”

On the side, Liu Gaojun quickly added: "Nobel Prize! ”

.......