Great Country Academician

At Nanjing University, in his office, Xu Chuan received the dean of Princeton's chemistry department who came from afar.

"Welcome, Director McGmillan." Xu Chuan warmly shook hands with the middle-aged man wearing square-framed black glasses.

In terms of knowing each other, the two actually knew each other, but if they met, it was the first time in their life. As for his previous life, because of his involvement in material science, he had communicated with the director of McGmillan several times.

It has to be said that in terms of material chemistry, McGmillan's strength is indeed among the top in the world.

In 2021, that is, two years later, the head of the Princeton Chemistry Department will receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his great contribution to "asymmetric organic catalysis".

This achievement has greatly promoted the development of chemical catalysis technology, especially in biomedicine, and has contributed to great achievements. Various drugs prepared using this technology have saved countless patients.

More importantly, he is still young. Born in 1968, he is only in his fifties this year, and he was not more than fifty-five years old when he won the Nobel Prize. Among the Nobel Prize winners, he can be said to be very young .

"Xu, nice to meet you. You look much younger than the photos on the news. Are you really only twenty-three years old? It's incredible that you are younger than most of the students I lead."

After shaking hands, David McGmillan looked Xu Chuan up and down, and exclaimed with surprise on his face.

Xu Chuan smiled and said, "Thank you. Sit down first. Would you like some tea or coffee?"

"Do as the Romans do, isn't that what they say? Have a cup of tea, and let me try the magic of something that Chinese people love to drink." McGmillan said with a smile.

Xu Chuan smiled, and while getting up to make tea, he said: "Of course, drinking tea has many benefits. It is rich in catechin, cholesterolenone, caffeine, inositol, etc., which are beneficial to the human body. Elements, can lower blood pressure, lose weight, detoxify, reduce cardiovascular disease and so on.”

"The most important thing is that for researchers like us, it can refresh our minds, improve the efficiency of our brains, and keep us focused during scientific research."

With an interested look on his face, McGmillan said with a smile: "I really can't wait to taste it."

The daily work of scientific researchers consumes a lot of brains, which is why many scientific researchers are bald at a young age. Something that can keep the brain awake and improve the work efficiency of the brain is still of great help to them.

If it really has the effect that Professor Xu said, he may be able to study the chemical substances in the tea to see if he can extract them.

After serving two cups of tea, the two exchanged pleasantries before getting to the point.

"Xu, I am very interested in the computational mathematical model of the chemical material you mentioned. I don't know when it is convenient. Can I go to the Materials Research Institute under your name?"

Holding the teacup, after the two chatted for a while, McGmillan asked impatiently.

Xu Chuan smiled and said, "You can do it at any time, but you have come from a long way and have been on a plane for dozens of hours, do you want to take a rest first?"

David McGmillan shook his head quickly, and said: "No, I am more looking forward to the model you built than being tired. If it can really achieve the effect you said, I will try my best to convince Christopher Isglu Cloth."

Christopher Isgrubb is the president of Princeton and a member of the board of directors. With his support, this cooperation can be said to be stable.

Xu Chuan nodded, drank the tea in the cup in one gulp, and said with a smile, "Then we can set off now."

With the impatient head of the chemistry department, Xu Chuan rushed to the Chuanhai Materials Research Institute. After making a phone call, the burly and majestic senior brother Fan Pengyue rushed over quickly.

"This is David McGmillan, the director of the Department of Chemistry at Princeton, and this is Fan Pengyue, the director of the Chuanhai Materials Research Institute"

While walking towards the laboratory, Xu Chuan briefly introduced each other and asked, "Brother Fan, is there any update or patch for the chemical material calculation model today?"

An initial crude model, updates are common.

And because of the need to fill in various basic material key information data and test updates, the update speed of the chemical material calculation model is quite frequent, almost two or three times a week.

Fan Pengyue: "There is no update plan today, but if you want to simulate, I recommend using the previous version of the model."

"Two days ago, Yu Zhen and his team integrated part of the data of silicon-based materials, but the latest version of the simulation test found that the process was a bit unstable, and the simulated response deviated from the actual experimental response. It is still being debugged."

Xu Chuan nodded and said, "Okay."

On the second floor of the laboratory, a group of people came to the office dedicated to modeling. The office is not very big. On the one hand, the preliminary work is not too big, and on the other hand, Xu Chuan didn't have much money to expand the laboratory before.

Most of the money he got from winning papers in the past was invested in the research institute.

Fortunately, the patent authorization fee for the artificial SEI film has already been paid, and now they can move there after the new office address is settled.

In the office, Fan Pengyue called a programmer who was busy testing the model. With his help, a backed up old version of the mathematical model was opened on the computer.

Seeing the mathematical model running in the hands of the programmer and introducing the corresponding functions, McGmillan asked, "Can you simulate the material development process?"

Xu Chuan nodded, and said: "Yes, but the current model has only been developed and processed for a short time, and the functions are not too many. It can only analyze and combine the existing materials in the database, as well as some early-used models. material simulation work."

"Currently, there are not many simulation materials that can be simulated, mainly compound materials such as lithium, carbon, and fluorine, and certain conditions need to be given manually for the time being."

"Lithium batteries should be within your data range?" McGmillan asked.

Xu Chuan nodded, and said: "Most of the materials for lithium batteries are there, and these have been sorted out before. But they don't contain organic solvents at present. After all, there are too many types, and they can't be processed in a short while."

"Is there any data on carbon-aluminum foil coated with a conductive coating? Is it possible to do a simulation of carbon-aluminum coating?"

After thinking about it, McGmillan asked one of the lithium battery materials.

Carbon-aluminum coating materials are important and important in lithium batteries, and it is not important to say that they are not important. It is a new technology that has only appeared in the last two years.

It mainly uses carbon-aluminum functional coating to treat the surface of the conductive substrate of the battery, provides excellent static conductivity, and collects the micro-current of the active material, thereby greatly reducing the contact resistance between the positive/negative electrode material and the current collector, etc. wait.

It can improve the performance of lithium batteries to a certain extent, but it is not an essential item in lithium batteries. It can also operate normally without it, but the performance will decrease.

On the side, Fan Pengyue replaced Xu Chuan and replied: "Yes, the relevant data of composite coating and carbon-aluminum materials have been entered, if Professor McGmillan wants to see it, we can do a simple R\u0026D process simulation. "

"Then carbon aluminum coating."

Fan Pengyue: "Do you have performance requirements?"

"Can you also set the performance of carbon-aluminum coated sheets?" McGmillan asked in surprise.

"Theoretically, it's possible, but at present, it's impossible to perfectly simulate the performance slice you require. After all, it's just the most basic and crude model for the time being." Xu Chuan shrugged and replied.

McGmillan thought for a while and said: "Then it is required to set the thickness of the aluminum foil to be in the range of 10-30 μm, the thickness of the SuperP conductive layer to be in the range of 0.3-0.9 μm, and the thickness of the graphene conductive layer to be in the range of 0.5-1.2 μm. The thickness of the mixed conductive layer is 0.3-2μm"

McGmillan quickly screened some performance parameters of carbon-aluminum flakes from his mind, and now he is more and more curious about what the crude model in front of him can do.

Fan Pengyue nodded, turned around and told the programmer to start inputting these parameters into the mathematical model, and then started the simulation research and development of carbon-aluminum coating materials.

On the screen, after the programmer entered the parameters and requirements into the model, the simple mathematical model began to run automatically.

The appearance of the other model is very simple, but this model is actually not small, the number of lines of code is quite large, and the development of the model has gone through more than half a year.

Moreover, it was not Chuanhai Materials Research Institute who developed and compiled this model, but outsourced it to a famous software company. It cost nearly 11 million to complete a basic version. It can be said that the money spent on modeling alone, It's almost enough to buy another Chuanhai Materials Research Institute.

But how to put it, if you spend money, the quality must still be guaranteed.

A group of people waited in the office for about an hour and a half before the simulation research and development of carbon-aluminum coating materials was completed.

The detailed data after operation has been saved in the corresponding file, and everyone will have a copy after printing it out.

After receiving the documents from the staff, McGmillan couldn't wait to read them.

A detailed preparation method of carbon-coated aluminum foil, comprising the following steps:

S1: Pretreat the aluminum foil body.

The detailed treatment plan is as follows: [S1, the priority plan for processing the aluminum foil body, the thickness standard is taken as , and acetic acid is used to remove the dirt and impurities on the surface of the aluminum foil.]

S2: Mix and stir the binder and the solvent evenly, then add two or more conductive agents and mix evenly to obtain a composite conductive paste.

The detailed treatment plan is as follows: [S2, the priority plan for preparing composite conductive paste, using polytetrafluoroethylene or polyvinylidene fluoride.]

S3: Put the composite conductive paste into the electrospinning device, spray the aluminum foil, and then dry to obtain the first layer of composite carbon-coated aluminum foil;

The detailed treatment plan is as follows: [S3, the preferred plan for the preparation of the first layer of composite carbon-coated aluminum foil, using sodium tripolyphosphate. The electrostatic spraying voltage is 15-20kv, the solution flow rate is 0.5-3ml·h-1, the electrospinning nozzle and the aluminum foil The distance is 0.5-10cm]

S4:.

S5:.

In the office, McMillan looked at the plan in his hands with shock in his eyes.

The plan in hand not only gives a fairly detailed preparation process, but even gives an optimal plan for each step, including the selection of materials, processing, what kind of equipment is needed, the requirements for equipment during the processing process, temperature, pressure, etc. etc., are given reference information.

More importantly, there is more than one solution given by the model.

The document in his hand listed three possible preparation options.

Although not all the preparation methods given in this plan are perfect in his eyes, and there are still many places that can be optimized, it is a miracle in itself.

Of course, it would not be a big deal if all the steps were manually entered in advance, but it is obvious that the mathematical model in front of me does not use such a method.

McMillan has never thought that a model can achieve this level, relying on mathematical models to complete all steps of material selection, calculation, optimization, etc. How is this possible!

After flipping through the plan given by the calculation model in his hand, he couldn't wait to ask: "My God, how did you do it!"

Xu Chuan put down the copy in his hand and explained with a smile: "This is the charm of the combination of mathematical physics and chemistry. It can bring us a brand new world."

"Of course, it's not perfect right now, and it still needs quite a bit of optimization. But I believe that one day, it can change the whole world!"

"At that time, the research and development of materials will no longer rely entirely on experience and exploration, and we can hand over the corresponding requirements to computers, which will save us a lot of time."

Hearing this, David McGmillan watched Xu Chuan couldn't help swallowing, and said: "This is really an extremely crazy plan! You are a lunatic! Have you ever thought that you will make a large number of materials research and development People are out of work!"

According to the description of the person in front of me, if this model is really completed, it will overturn the development of the entire material industry.

Of course, breakthroughs in materials may follow.

But at the same time, it is foreseeable that R\u0026D personnel in the material industry, especially those basic personnel, will most likely lose their jobs on a large scale.

After all, if this model can be completed, perhaps most of the basic work of material research and development in the future can be handed over to this model.

In this way, many of the jobs of those low-level scientific researchers will be replaced.

Of course, for a top scientific research scholar engaged in chemical materials, there is no doubt that it has a fatal attraction!

Because it can save more time and give many different reference opinions from a scientific point of view.

Just like today's simulation of carbon-coated aluminum foil, after only waiting for more than an hour and a half, this model gave several different solutions.

This would have taken at least several days or more to complete if the trials were performed manually.

On the opposite side, Xu Chuan smiled and said, "In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this."

"Man is a creative creature, especially as a researcher and scholar who has mastered cutting-edge knowledge, he should focus his attention and energy on breakthroughs, rather than repeating the work that can be easily replaced."

"And this set of models can indeed save a lot of time theoretically, and even combine optimal solutions, but it cannot replace material developers."

"The cutting-edge and top-notch breakthroughs are always related to people. Human creativity can never be replaced by current computers."

"Including the plans it gives, in fact, it needs people to conduct tests and experiments, so it will always be just an auxiliary tool and cannot replace the existence of people."

After a pause, he continued: "And as time goes by, even if I don't do it, someone will come to do the job."