I Have a Research Support System

The return of review comments on "Nature Energy" disrupted Xu Qiu's previous experimental plan. Originally, he planned to go to Jiangwan this week to synthesize Y-series receptor materials. Handle the matter of the article well.

After returning to school, Xu Qiu and Wei Xingsi met and discussed each question raised by the reviewers in turn.

Fortunately, when the paper was submitted before this work, the experiments were done quite adequately. Xu Qiu did all the experimental representations he could think of at that time, and was not asked by the reviewers to supplement the experiments, and received a suggestion for minor corrections.

Otherwise, if it is a major change, it is estimated that it will not be completed in a week or two.

Next, Xu Qiu went mad for three and a half days, until he finally corrected the "Natural Energy" article on Friday night. There were more than 20 questions in total, and all of them were answered.

Because there were too many questions, Xu Qiu couldn’t even say enough words to thank the reviewers. He used up the usual thank you sentences, and then he could only change adjectives, like this: “Thanks to the reviewers for their positive/valuable/pertinent Views."

The workload is actually not small, the revision of the text, the supplementary text, and the modification of the pictures are not mentioned, and the reply document alone is as long as 10 pages of WORD.

In other words, an average of two questions will fill a whole page of WORD.

The number of words in this opinion answer document adds up to more than 4,500 words, and the text of the article is only nearly 5,000 words.

Rounding up, it is equivalent to spending another three and a half days for Xu Qiu to rewrite an article.

In fact, if you usually submit to AM and other top journals in the first district, or other small articles in the second district, Xu Qiu will not be so concerned about the answers to the review comments.

But now, after all, it is a major sub-journal of "Nature". Although it is half a grade lower than the three top journals of CNS, it is also below the three journals and above tens of thousands of journals.

Perhaps only the top bosses may not care about scientific research results at this level.

Xu Qiu is still unable to be so indifferent.

After submitting the manuscript, Wei Xingsi took the initiative to say: "Xu Qiu, you've worked hard these few days. I just bought some crabs at home. Come to my house for a light meal tonight?"

In fact, Xu Qiu was quite curious about the situation at Teacher Wei's home. He has been in Shanghai for more than five years, and he has never visited the homes of local people in Shanghai. thing……"

"Oh, that's fine." Wei Xingsi didn't force the invitation: "You guys go out to eat tonight, right? I'll pay for this meal, and I'll reimburse you with the invoice later."

Sunday.

Xu Qiu stayed at the Handan campus and did not go to Jiangwan to do synthesis experiments.

He originally planned to continue writing the "Joule" article on the "full solution, translucent, and colorful" system, but he just turned on the laptop and was called over by Wei Xingsi before the code was written.

'The comments on the "Nature Energy" article are back? It shouldn't be so fast. ’ Xu Qiu muttered something in his heart, and followed Mr. Wei into 218.

While making tea, Wei Xingsi said, "The results of the Sino-Swiss STINT project that I applied for before came out, and next year I will receive funding for the project. A total of 200,000 yuan is for travel expenses, and it is specially used for visits and exchanges. .”

"That's good." Xu Qiu casually responded, "Afterwards, we can communicate with Mr. Feng Shengdong in Sweden."

This project was written by him and Wu Feifei before, so he is quite familiar with it. What is more interesting is that if Xu Qiu and the others went to Sweden to communicate with Feng Shengdong, the past and return air tickets would be reimbursed with Chinese funds, and they Consumption incurred in Sweden will be reimbursed by the Swedish side.

When writing the financial budget before, this item was almost written wrong. At that time, the subconscious reaction was that all the expenditures of the Chinese side were paid by the Chinese side.

"If you go to Sweden, you can also take a trip to Finland and visit Ronald. Anyway, they are all Schengen countries, so you only need to apply for one type of visa." Wei Xingsi thought for a moment and said:

"The schedule is after we go to the MRS meeting in the beautiful country, probably next summer."

"Okay." Xu Qiu nodded in agreement. When he applied for the Sino-Swiss STINT program before, he also learned about the Schengen visa.

Schengen Visa (Schengen Visa) refers to a visa issued in accordance with the "Schengen Agreement", which is named after the city of Schengen in Luxembourg.

The time can be traced back to June 14, 1985. At that time, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg signed an agreement in the Schengen border town of Luxembourg. The agreement stipulated the single visa policy of the member states.

According to this agreement, any visa issued by a Schengen member state is also considered valid in all other member states without the need to apply for another visa.

The countries implementing this agreement are the so-called "Schengen countries".

By the end of 2013, the number of Schengen member states had increased to 26, including Sweden and Finland.

The Schengen Agreement divides countries other than Schengen member countries into three categories: positive list, gray list and negative list:

The positive list refers to all Schengen member states and other visa-free developed countries, a total of 30 countries;

The gray list refers to countries that some member states require visas, while others do not require visas. There are a total of 20 countries. It is up to each member state to decide whether to apply for a visa for the gray list countries;

The countries on the negative list refer to countries that must apply for visas, a total of 130 countries, including flower growers.

Although the international status of flower growers is not low, due to historical reasons, most countries in the world, especially developed countries such as Europe and the United States, basically need to apply for visas in advance, and there are not many countries that can apply for visas on arrival.

According to the data in 2016, the number of visa-free countries in the passport of flower growers is 50 countries, ranking 87th in the world.

And the number one is Germany, 177 countries are visa-free.

The second is Sweden, which is visa-free for 176 countries.

The third is Finland, France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain. 175 countries are visa-free.

The bottom five countries are Afghanistan, 25 countries are visa-free; Pakistan, 29 countries are visa-free; Iraq, 30 countries are visa-free; Somalia, 31 countries are visa-free; Syria, 32 countries are visa-free.

Of course, these figures change from year to year.

Wei Xingsi continued: "Besides, it's almost the end of the year, and the previous fund needs to write an annual summary report. Although there is still a month to go, it can be written first. This year should be the last summary report, and the next time is to write a summary report." Final report."

Xu Qiu nodded. This annual summary report is not difficult to write. The operation is similar to last year, which is to translate the articles he published into Chinese.

I still remember that he and his senior sister were writing the summary report last year in the organic photovoltaic team. This year, the team has expanded to five people, and the number of scientific research achievements has also greatly increased.

Wei Xingsi also proposed: "There is also the newly applied fund project. Don't worry about the key projects. When Gong Yuanjiang comes over, I will look at the outstanding youth fund first. If you have time, I will talk to Wu Shengnan and try to settle this matter before the winter vacation. Don't delay until the Chinese New Year."

"Before the renovation of the Jiangwan laboratory, the fume hood said that the final payment for the project had not been received yet. You can ask Wu Feifei to check it out. If it is impossible, ask her to go to the financial department."

"By the way, didn't you become a teaching assistant this year? Now in my course, a student visits the laboratory and shows things on the PPT. The latter is counted as the assessment method of this course. I need you to host it. It's time for me to talk to them. Students are scheduled for Friday next week."

"..."

Xu Qiu once again harvested a bunch of miscellaneous things, some of which can be distributed to others for help, and some need to be handled by himself.

In fact, he often thinks that it is not easy to do scientific research now, and a lot of time is wasted on some "meaningless" things, which is really slow.

And this is still the case of staying in school all the time. If you often travel around the world, hold meetings and exchanges, you will spend even less time on scientific research.

But if you don't do these "meaningless" things, many things will be affected. The most direct possibility is that you won't be able to apply for fund projects, so you won't be able to get money.

What kind of scientific research can you do without money?

This seems to be an unsolvable proposition. Maybe only by reaching the top and becoming a big boss in the head can we get rid of these trivial matters and concentrate on research.

Next, Xu Qiu first took Wu Shengnan to 218, briefly discussed with Wei Xingsi the writing situation of the Outstanding Youth Fund, and put forward some ideas of his own.

Afterwards, he began to be busy writing the part of the fund summary report about the articles he published, which can be regarded as an inventory of his work this year.

It turns out that although the number of his articles this year has not increased much compared to last year, the quality of his articles has improved a lot, with more than 80% of the articles of the top journals in the first district and above.

It can be said that if you don’t make a move, it’s enough. Once you make a move, it will be an AM-level article, or even a super-AM-level article.

Xu Qiu felt that this kind of regular inventory of the work he did was quite meaningful.

Because he found that as the amount of work he completed increased, even if it was an article written by himself, after a long time, some details would be gradually forgotten.

For example, the 3D-PDI material he made before was optimized step by step, and finally an optimal material was obtained. It is difficult for him to draw the molecular structure of this material without reading the original text now.

Of course, if Xu Qiu was given the initial conditions and a few minutes, he could still obtain the optimal path at that time through deduction and analysis.

Although the details in memory are missing, Xu Qiu has already extracted the scientific thinking behind it and kept it firmly in his mind.

Just like some mathematical and physical formulas used in middle school, even if they are forgotten now, they can be manually derived through calculus and other methods.

For example, asking him to use calculus to calculate the area formula of a circle is still easy.

Speaking of this, Xu Qiu remembered a joke about mathematicians.

A professor of mathematics at a university in Great Britain found that the sewer in his house was blocked, so he invited a plumber to fix it.

After 30 minutes, the water pipe cleared.

The professor was quite satisfied with the plumber's performance, but when he saw the bill, he couldn't help shouting: "Waiter! In just 30 minutes, the money you charged is enough for 1/3 of my monthly income! I'm going to be a plumber!" .

The plumber said: "You can go. Our company is recruiting people, and we also provide training. But you have to say that you only graduated from elementary school. The company doesn't like people with too high education."

So the professor went to participate in training and became a plumber.

His income tripled in one fell swoop.

He is much happier than before.

A few years later, the company suddenly decided to raise the educational level of plumbers to the level of junior high school graduates, and required all its workers to go to night school.

The first class in evening school is mathematics.

The teacher wanted to see how good the basics of these plumbers were, so he randomly selected someone to write the formula for the area of ​​a circle.

The professor was selected, but after working as a plumber for so many years, he had forgotten that the formula for the area of ​​a circle is πR squared.

So he had to deduce it from the beginning: divide the circle infinitely and then integrate. But he came up with a negative πR squared.

The scene was a bit embarrassing, the professor came again, but the result was still negative.

Embarrassed, he turned to the dozens of fellow plumbers sitting in the classroom for help.

I saw these colleagues whispering to each other, saying to him one after another: "Exchange the upper and lower limits of the points."

Monday, group meeting.

Wu Feifei first reported that her JMCA article "Introduction of ITIC non-fullerene-like stacked devices into two-dimensional perovskite" was completed and submitted.

In addition, the previously submitted CM article "Two-dimensional Perovskite Devices Based on ITIC Transport Layer" was rejected by the editor, and then transferred to AELM under Wiley. I originally wanted to transfer to JMCA under RSC, but it happened that the article in my hand was also JMCA. , So I transferred to Wiley.

In fact, except for Xu Qiu in the group, the submission of articles was relatively smooth. Most of his articles were accepted after revision. Only one manuscript was rejected, and it was transferred from AM to AEM.

The process of submitting articles for others is not so smooth.

Chen Wanqing and Duan Yun both had the experience of being repeatedly rejected and revising their articles.

This is why some people say that "every time you submit an article is an experience for yourself". For most scientific researchers, it is normal for articles to be rejected frequently, and repeated revisions are the most tormented.

Sun Wo's current ACSAMI job had already been submitted last week, so he and Wu Feifei started a new job last week.

The two of them led two undergraduate students, Yu Ya and Yan Hu, to carry out the work based on "translucent devices based on two-dimensional perovskite" and "true stacked devices based on two-dimensional perovskite", and cooperated with many The organic photovoltaic team here in Autumn will conduct docking.

Sun Wo reported the results of the docking. He mainly learned from Mo Wenlin. Because of Xu Qiu’s early work, Sun Wo directly used the optimized conditions, and the final result was not bad:

The translucent device under the two-dimensional perovskite standard system can reach an efficiency of 7%, and the average visible light transmittance (AVT) can reach more than 30%.

The band gap of two-dimensional perovskite materials is wider than that of three-dimensional perovskite materials, about 1.6-1.8 electron volts.

Therefore, the light absorption range of these materials is difficult to cover the entire visible light range. Like the standard material chosen by Sun Wo, the absorption edge is about 700 nanometers.

The light absorption range is relatively narrow and cannot cover the entire sunlight spectrum. This is a major disadvantage that limits its performance improvement, but it can be turned into treasure in semi-transparent devices, which can take this opportunity to achieve higher AVT.

Of course, the current efficiency data is still somewhat low for two-dimensional perovskite, and further optimization is needed.

Duan Yun received news that Warwick had passed the interview last week.

However, according to people familiar with the matter, Warwick’s approval process is based on people, so it’s only when you get an offer that it’s settled. Passing the interview is useless. Warwick’s interview is about equal to passing the resume screening of other companies.

For Duan Yun, this is not a bad thing. Now he still has more than half a year to graduate, and he also wants to find a good place for himself.

Because the offer has a valid period, there may be a relatively long one that can last up to six months, but there are also relatively short ones, such as one month or even one week.

Once you get an offer, you need to make a decision within the deadline. If you reject the offer, the other party may not be willing to accept you later.

Duan Yun also has faint worries. It is said that Huawei’s 35-year-old employees will be optimized if they cannot get promoted. Now that I am 30+, I don’t know if I can adapt to the “wolf culture” there.

In addition, Duan Yun has three companies that have passed the first round of assessment and are in the second and third rounds of interviews, and his hometown Taicheng Vocational and Technical College is a guarantee.

According to Xu Qiu's observation, Duan Yun is somewhat inclined to return to his hometown to develop.

Duan Yun's girlfriend, brother, and parents are all in his hometown, and there is a factory at home.

Although it is said that people who work in industry do not make money now, but the family has a factory, so it is not a bad family.

In fact, if the family has a foundation, it may be a good choice to stay away from the first-tier and return to the second- and third-tier homes.

Many people come to the front line to chase their dreams because they have no security at home, so they choose to fight in big cities with more opportunities. Anyway, they have nothing to lose.

However, having said that, if the family has security, it is not bad to come to the front line to work hard. If you succeed, you can advance or retreat. Even if you fail in hard work, you can choose to go home and inherit the family business.

Tian Qing's "Research on the charge transport mechanism of non-fullerene systems with linearly changing three HOMO energy level differences" has made preliminary progress.

Mainly, Feng Shengdong in Sweden used TAS and other methods, combined with experimental data, to analyze, draw several schematic diagrams of the mechanism, and use cartoon diagrams to show the various recombination phenomena in the process of charge transport under different HOMO energy levels. Time scale changes.

Xu Qiu still has some admiration for Feng Shengdong, he is very productive.

In the past year, Feng Shengdong and Wei Xingsi's research group have joined forces and published a lot of articles together. It is estimated that it will be no problem for him to become an assistant professor.

Chen Wanqing has now signed an internship contract with Blue River, and began to serve Blue River Company wholeheartedly.

She also participated in the group meeting as usual, because Blue River, Wei Xingsi, and Xu Qiu jointly established the company, and the senior just happened to be the middleman, responsible for conveying some of the progress of Blue River Company.

During this period of time, Blue River's main company was mainly doing preparations and debugging before the launch of the first-generation prototype.

The optoelectronic materials company has also opened up two new customers. Although it has not yet achieved profitability, as the popularity of the organic photovoltaic field gradually increases, the future prospects are promising.

Senior sister can be regarded as a veteran employee of Blue River Company, and she may be able to get some shares after becoming a full-time employee. After all, if she graduates, she will be the only doctoral student in the company, second only to Yang Qin, who used to be in Shanghai Jiaotong University. .

As for the other master students, although they arrived at the company a few months earlier than Chen Wanqing, on the one hand, they are all masters, and on the other hand, they have no skills, which means they have no work experience, and the seniors have brought their own skills. .

Xu Qiu has nothing to report this week. He went to apply for a visa last week, and then came back from the review comments of "Nature Energy". He has been revising the article, and then finished the annual fund summary. Wu Shengnan discussed the writing of the Outstanding Young Fund.

The schedule is full, and the progress of the experiment is zero.

Han Jiaying's AM articles on J4 donor materials are about 60% in progress, and a batch of PTQ1s have been synthesized at the same time.

Although the efficiency of PTQ1-based devices reached 12.8% last week, she suspected that the molecular weight of a batch of PTQ1 materials synthesized last time was not high enough, and there was still room for further improvement in this efficiency data, so she synthesized it again with a microwave reactor.

As a result, the performance of the newly synthesized material was not as good as last time, and the highest efficiency was only 12.0%, which made her very depressed.

However, this is also the normal state in the process of doing experiments, full of various uncertainties.

It can be said that the only certainty in the scientific research process is uncertainty.

Xu Qiu helped her find out the reason, and found that although the molecular weight of the first batch of PTQ1 did not look high to the naked eye, it was actually not low in molecular weight, and the number average molecular weight could reach more than 20,000.

The newly synthesized second batch of PTQ2 has a lower molecular weight, with a number average molecular weight of only about 16,000.

In addition, the elemental analysis results showed that the ratio of each element in the second batch of materials deviated more seriously than the theoretical ratio, indicating that the polymer molecules may have more side reactions during the synthesis process.

As for why the school girl didn't do all kinds of representations first, find out the reason and then do the synthesis, but chose to repeat the experiment directly by seemingly "making a decision"?

This is because in the actual scientific research process, although there are various characterization methods that can assist, in many cases it is still based on visual observation and empirical judgment.

Because each characterization takes time, energy, and money. For some small research groups, due to insufficient funds, they often choose not to do characterization and rely on guesswork. The school girl mainly considers time.

If, during the synthesis experiment, an NMR test is performed for each step of the reaction, a complete set of infrared tests is performed before the next experiment is continued, then it may take a month to synthesize a material.

Therefore, in order to save time, the common practice is to do experiments first and then supplement the characterization.

And when the experiment fails, in most cases, I will choose to pretend that the problem does not exist, and repeat the previous experiment without thinking, instead of rushing to do various characterizations to find the problem.

Similar to restarting the computer can solve most computer problems.

Wu Shengnan submitted the CM article of 4TIC last week, and now her work has been emptied, and she began to devote her main energy to the writing of the Outstanding Youth Fund, and at the same time tutored two undergraduates to carry out the synthesis, characterization and device testing of FOIC materials, etc. experiment.

Mo Wenlin has improved the stacked devices this week, and she has optimized the efficiency to 13.4%, achieving 13.5%+12.3%=13.4%.

At the group meeting, Xu Qiu added several previous ideas about stacked devices, focusing on an effective idea that he had tested in the simulation laboratory.

That is, instead of using the middle thin-layer electrode in the "two-terminal method" stacked device, it is directly replaced by two almost transparent transmission layers, which can significantly reduce the light loss of the top cell device and greatly improve The current density of the top cell.

Based on this strategy, the latest results in the simulated laboratory achieve an efficiency of 14.3%!

Xu Qiu suddenly thought of what the reviewer of the previous "Nature Energy" article said: "The efficiency of 13% in the field of organic photovoltaics is not high, and we should aim for 15% and 18%."

Looking at it now, it seems that the efficiency of 13% is really nothing special, and 15% or even 18% should be the goal in the future.

Originally, Mo Wenlin planned the fifth and sixth ternary systems before. Even if these systems cannot publish AM-level articles, they can still publish some small articles in the second district.

But now seeing the benefits of stacking, Mo Wenlin and Xu Qiu applied decisively to suspend the work on ternary devices, saying: "After publishing the work on the ternary system of J2:PCE10:IEICO-4F at hand, we will temporarily Don’t do the ternary system anymore.”

In addition, Mo Wenlin was also very smart, and offered to offer "she will do the experiment, as long as Xu Qiu can leave her a mouthful of soup when he eats meat", Xu Qiu naturally did not refuse.

Mo Wenlin's idea is also very simple. Although she doesn't know how Xu Qiu can make breakthroughs in the field of research, as long as she knows that Xu Qiu can take her to fly, it may be enough to hang out with the boss and drink soup. It's AM.

On the one hand, we say that the gap between people may be greater than that between people and gold.

But on the other hand, for ordinary people, the differences between people are actually not that big.

Choice is greater than hard work. Following the right people and finding a good platform are often better than staying in place and "humming".

For example, Xu Qiu actually changed the fate of many people, including Wei Xingsi's.

Maybe in a certain parallel time and space, Wei Xingsi returned to China for N years, but he was always stuck on "Qingqian".

The best articles published in the group are AM and EES. Journals with N at the beginning, even NC, cannot be published. Throughout the year, a total of five or six articles in the first and second districts are published.

Forty-three years old, applied for the Outstanding Youth Fund, but was not selected;

Forty-four years old, applied for "Yangtze River", but was still not selected;

At the age of forty-five, I want to apply for something, but unfortunately, the application age limit for "Jieqing" and "Changjiang" has reached, and there is no chance.

You can't apply for an academician. Although the age limit for academicians is 70 years old, they are not even "Jieqing" or "Yangtze River".

Therefore, Wei Xingsi's enthusiasm for a big fight just after returning to China gradually faded, and the rest is to be a salted fish and slowly retire, drink tea in the office every day, raise fish, and go abroad for exchange visits for a week and a half.

Life is so simple and unpretentious.