I Have a Research Support System

Xu Qiu was dragged by Blue River to talk for a long time. He started talking about artificial intelligence from "Neural Network and Deep Learning", and then moved to the rule of man and rule of law...

Most of the time, it was Lan He who was talking and Xu Qiu was listening.

If it is only about the amount of words read, Xu Qiu reckons that he should not be lower than Lan He. After all, when he read novels at night with the lights on, the word count was calculated in hundreds of millions.

However, if you look at the amount of information contained in the text, Blue River is definitely better.

Therefore, Xu Qiu listened more seriously.

In addition, he also wanted to know more about Lan He's personality, after all, he was a partner.

Previously, Xu Qiu's impression of Blue River was only initially established through meeting several times, eating a meal, and looking through the circle of friends. There may be some deviations. Only by communicating more can you get to know a person deeply.

For example, he and his school girl often talk at night by candlelight, discussing life together, and they understand each other much deeper, reaching the level where you know my strengths and weaknesses, and I know your depth.

The two chatted for more than half an hour, and Xu Qiu found that Lan He's ability to brag was relatively strong, not to mention other abilities.

It’s all in one set of words, after listening to it, Xu Qiu’s feeling is: "Wow, this field is about to rise, and it is really a wise choice for Qiandu to enter the field of artificial intelligence, which is very promising. ah."

It wasn't until Lan He talked about the photovoltaic field that Xu Qiu was familiar with that he immediately revealed that many places were not very rigorous. For example, laymen and even some insiders have been talking about it all the time, or writing in the article: " Low-cost organic photovoltaic devices".

In fact, the concept of low cost in the field of organic photovoltaics is a matter of the era of P3HT and PPV (polyphenylene vinylene) derivatives.

Up to now, the cost of organic photovoltaic materials has become higher and higher, and it is difficult to call it "low cost".

The new high-efficiency system at this stage, just take out one, whether it is a PCE10 donor or an ITIC acceptor, even if stability and other issues are not considered, the cost alone cannot compare with the commercialized silicon solar cells.

Scientific research is sometimes like this. The earliest development of organic photovoltaics may be largely aimed at cheapness. Later, during the research process, researchers found that high efficiency and low cost cannot be balanced. After weighing it, they decided to pursue efficiency first. After all, it is good Post articles, so the molecules become more and more complex, and the cost naturally becomes higher and higher.

And because of the inertia of thinking, many people have not changed their previous concepts, and have been using the sayings of more than ten years ago.

Of course, if we forcibly talk about low cost, it is not impossible to say, just avoid the important and take the light.

For example, it is claimed that organic photovoltaic devices are usually devices with a thickness of 100 nanometers, while silicon cells are devices with a thickness of 200 microns. For devices with the same area, the material consumption is a thousand times different.

The unit price of organic photovoltaic materials has a great chance to be one-thousandth of the unit price of silicon materials, so the cost of organic photovoltaic devices is lower.

In fact, regardless of methods such as spin coating, scrape coating or "slot-die", it is impossible to convert all materials into thin films. During this conversion process, the amount of loss may be very large.

Like the traditional spin coating method in the laboratory, the proportion of photovoltaic materials in the solution converted into effective layer films may be less than 10%, that is, more than 90% are wasted.

However, if it is scrap coating, "slot-die" and other methods, it is difficult to prepare a thin film with a stable film thickness of about 100 nanometers. Usually, a thick film is directly prepared, such as a 300-nanometer film. This is also true to a certain extent. It is a waste, and at the same time it will lower the conversion efficiency of the device.

After all, not all organic photovoltaic materials are compatible with thick film and large size.

But no matter what, with what Blue River said, if you make a PPT and use it to fool investors, it shouldn't be a big problem.

Most investors don't know what the specific experimental process is like, just as the general public doesn't know what the scientific research circle looks like at all.

Seeing that Lan He wanted to change to another field to continue communicating, Xu Qiu took the initiative to leave, fearing that if he didn't leave, he would be left behind for another half an hour: "Well, I'll go and see how other people are doing."

"Okay, come to me directly if you have anything to do." Lan He nodded and sent Xu Qiu to the door of the office.

Xu Qiu saw the big office outside, and now there was only the new employee wearing a gray jacket and gray casual trousers, who was typing on the keyboard. He looked up when he heard the sound, then lowered his head and continued work.

This should be the new programmer, Xu Qiu ignored him and walked directly to the device laboratory.

At this time, Chen Wanqing was operating the scraping and coating machine in the glove box, and several employees of Blue River were also busy.

However, Yang Qin, Xuemei and the other employee who did organic synthesis were not here, and they were probably conducting synthesis experiments in another organic laboratory.

According to the idea given to her by Xu Qiu, the senior sister brought several tens of milligrams of materials such as J1, H22, and IEICO-4Cl from Mr. Wei's research group. Material.

Seeing Xu Qiu, Chen Wanqing asked casually while manipulating the scraping equipment, "Have you been chatting for so long?"

"I didn't expect Lan He to be a talker." Xu Qiu replied helplessly, then copied the latest scraping machine to the simulation laboratory, and watched the senior sister operate it.

"It looks pretty good." Chen Wanqing picked up a PET substrate scrap-coated with PFN transmission layer material with tweezers, and showed it to Xu Qiu.

"Well, the blade works very stably," Xu Qiu observed the substrate for a while, and continued to comment: "Although the scraped film can still see the phenomenon of uneven thickness, it is not as obvious as before. The effect has improved a lot.”

"Yeah, compared to the last time I came here, they have improved the instrument a lot, and it is said that it has now iterated to version 1.3.2." Chen Wanqing paused, and said: "Now I think the 7% you set before , 8% of the target, there is still a chance to achieve."

"Then I will wait for your good news." Xu Qiu said with a smile.

In the device laboratory, there is not much to pay attention to except for the scraping machine.

As for the two newly purchased instruments, the homogenizer is an ordinary model without the integrated thermal spin coating function. It is the model eliminated by Mr. Wei’s research group. The models on this side of the river are newer, but they don't integrate any special features.

So, Xu Qiu stopped for a while, and walked to the organic laboratory nearby.

Han Jiaying and the others are all here, and they are conducting a low-temperature experiment at this time, which seems to be a reaction of introducing aldehyde groups on the IDTT unit.

"Brother, you're here~" the school girl greeted cheerfully.

"This is our newly recruited master, Zhang Ren." Yang Qin also took the initiative to introduce.

"Xu Qiu, hello." Zhang Ren greeted shyly.

"Well, hello." Xu Qiu greeted Zhang Ren, smiled at Xuemei, and chatted with Yang Qin: "How is the progress now?"

"In the past, I mainly worked on the two units of IDTT and ICIN. Now each has about ten grams of high-purity monomers. Next, I plan to try to synthesize ITIC." Yang Qin paused, and said: "What we are doing today is the key The revolutionary IDTT reaction to introduce aldehyde groups is only two steps away from getting ITIC materials."

"The progress is pretty fast." Xu Qiu thought about it. Since the establishment of the company, it has only been three weeks in the past, and Yang Qin has almost got the ITIC materials. The speed of this experiment is already very fast.

Although Yang Qin copied the wheel made by Xu Qiu, he also started from scratch, which means that he basically did not paddle, and he may even work overtime. Maybe Blue River promised him some benefits, and there must be a brave man under the reward. Well.

There are three new fume hoods in the organic laboratory here, and a lot of new instruments have been added, including a relatively advanced high-pressure liquid chromatograph, which can pass through four columns at the same time, which is more suitable for this kind of enterprise-level mass production. materials, and also comes with a purity analysis function.

There is also an infrared spectrometer, which is also used to characterize the purity of the product. After all, the materials produced now are for sale, and a purity verification report is required to reassure users.

In addition, there is a microwave reactor, also of the CEM brand, to speed up the reaction.

Xu Qiu had to sigh with emotion that the company's conditions were still good.

These two laboratories have newly purchased fume hoods and instruments, and the total price is conservatively estimated to have exceeded 1 million, which is much more generous than that of universities.

In colleges and universities, the distribution of scientific research funds is actually very unbalanced, and those who are drought die, and those who are flooded die.

In fact, most research groups don’t have much funding, and 1 million is a lot of money. Many associate professor research groups have less than 100,000 instruments in total. When doing experiments, they use all kinds of school public platforms. instrument.

At the beginning, there is an associate professor, only one office, no funds, no students, and the experiments are all based on rubbish.

This is the true portrayal of green pepper scholars.

Wei Xingsi doesn't have much spare money for the projects in his hands now, and the sum of all kinds of funds is only a few hundred thousand. If there is no way to apply for key projects and the Outstanding Youth Fund in the future, the development speed of the research group will slow down.

Many things that need to be solved with money must be solved with manpower and time.

Of course, there are not no solutions, such as PY with other research groups, go to Gong Yuanjiang to fight the autumn wind or something.

The day passed.

Chen Wanqing successfully prepared three kinds of full-solution processing, translucent, scrape-coated, flexible, and colorful devices. Among them, the PCE10:IEICO-4Cl system is the best, with an efficiency of 6.17%.

The senior sister tried it for the first time, and she is relatively close to the target value of 7%, which shows that this system is still very promising.

Xu Qiu and Han Jiaying were mainly busy with organic synthesis. With Yang Qin, they successfully obtained the IDTT-CHO material, and they were only one step away from synthesizing the final ITIC.

The last step of the reaction is not difficult, but it needs to use pyridine, which is more flavorful, so I leave it to Yang Qin to complete.

Before leaving, Xu Qiu chatted with Yang Qin again and told him what to do next: "After ITIC is successfully synthesized, I will prepare it for the time being, because ITIC is already being made by others, and it is not competitive enough to take it out alone. , so we have to shift our main energy to the IEICO-4F system."

"This IEICO-4F material is a representative of the near-infrared system. In Chen Wanqing's article, this material broke the current world record for efficiency in the field of organic photovoltaics with an efficiency of 12.3%. When Chen Wanqing's article is published, we will simultaneously use this as a selling point for publicity. , fired the first shot of our company's products."

Yang Qin: "Understood!"

PS: Happy New Year, fellow book lovers~