Scholar’s Advanced Technological System
Chapter 350: The dawn of the lithium-sulfur era
After Arranging Wei Wen’s whereabouts, Lu Zhou turned back to the office and continued to prepare his ppt.
During this time, his work will basically be carried out around the "theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure."
Just a week passed, when Lu Zhou finally completed his ppt, he suddenly received a call from Yang Xu.
As soon as the phone was connected, there was an excitement in the earpiece.
"We have succeeded! We have succeeded!"
Hearing the exhilarating tone, Lu Zhou slammed down and immediately asked: "Lithium-sulfur battery?"
Yang Xu, holding the phone, nodded hard and said with excitement: "Well! Your idea is right. We use glucose as the precursor, choose polyaniline? Polypyrrole copolymer as pore former, and successfully synthesize the specific surface area up to 3022m2/g, hollow carbon nanospheres with a diameter of only 69nm."
Drinking a slobber, Yang Xurun, who is excited, said that he couldn’t wait to continue.
“Then, we mixed the hollow carbon spheres with the sulfur elemental material by chemical deposition and assembled them into the battery mold to perform the battery performance test. The final result is quite gratifying.”
"I don't talk about the many things on the phone. I have sent the relevant experimental data to your mailbox. Let's take a look!"
"Okay, I will go."
Seeing Yang Xu’s expression so excited, Lu Zhou also came to the interest, he immediately turned off the video call, immediately log in to the mailbox.
In less than five minutes, he received an email from Yang Xu.
After downloading the attachments in the mail, Lu Zhou opened the experimental data roughly organized into pdf format with a professional reader, and then carefully read it line by line from the first part.
In this experimental data, not only the battery performance test data, but also the pictures taken with the SEM and the curves plotted according to the data.
As Yang Xu said, the performance of this new material is quite good, and it is no wonder that his voice will be so excited.
Compared with the original hollow carbon nanospheres and the activated carbon nanospheres prepared by the activation of potassium hydroxide, the novel hollow carbon sphere and sulfur composites exhibit superiority under the condition of 70% sulfur content. Cycle performance.
This is the macro level, and the changes at the micro level are quite interesting.
The sulfur ions embedded in the hollow carbon sphere can normally escape from the surface pores of the hollow carbon sphere, and electrochemically react with the lithium ions moving to the positive electrode in an orderly manner, and the generated li2s2 and li2s are between the carbon sphere and the carbon sphere. The gap is quiet, avoiding the pore blockage affecting the efficiency of the electrochemical cycle.
On the other hand, since the charged sulfur ions are in limited contact with the lithium ions moving to the positive electrode, the formation of the long-chain compound lisn (n>2) is largely avoided.
It is well known that long-chain lisn molecules that are easily soluble in organic solutions are the culprit of the shuttle effect. If the formation of such products can be reduced from the formation mechanism, it is equivalent to preventing the loss of the positive electrode material from the source.
Not only that, even if a lisn(n>2) compound is formed in a limited reaction system, the polysulfide compound is largely retained in the skeleton of the positive electrode material due to the surface adsorption of the hollow carbon sphere. Instead of diffusing through the surface of the material into the electrolyte.
With these two layers of insurance, the effect of the shuttle effect has been reduced to a minimum.
Turning over this part of the analysis of the physical and chemical properties, Lu Zhou directly looked at the battery test part.
According to the experimental tests of multiple sets of battery packs conducted by Jinling Computational Materials Research, when the sulfur content is 73%, the ability to inhibit the diffusion of polysulfide compounds into the electrolyte reaches a peak. After 500 cycles, the Coulomb efficiency remained at a fairly high level.
When the sulfur content is 75%, comprehensive factors such as coulombic efficiency, mass energy density, volume energy density, etc., the overall performance of the battery reaches an optimal level.
Regarding this new type of hollow carbon sphere material, Yang Xu named it hcs-2 material according to the naming principle previously established by Lu Zhou.
Compared with the hcs-1 material, which has relatively limited industrial application value, this new material is undoubtedly more likely to be industrially produced!
“It’s perfect.”
Putting the experimental report in his hand on the table, Lu Zhou felt a sentence in his heart, then took the mobile phone out of his pocket and called Mr. White Sheridan, the general manager of Star Technology, to let him immediately start international patents. Application.
Taking into account the broad prospects of this material in industrial applications, based on this research, Star Technology will separately register patents on a series of aspects such as compounds, production, use, and mixing ratio of sulfur with hs-2 materials. Establish a complete set of patent barriers.
If the situation is optimistic, he can get the patent number before the end of the month, and then he can start writing the paper.
As a model for solving real-world problems using computational materials, the success of hcs-2 materials will undoubtedly provide an important factual argument for his theoretical model of electrochemical interface structures.
Compared to this carbon-sulfur composite itself, Lu Zhou is particularly looking forward to this...
......
White's work efficiency is very high. Lu Zhou has not been able to go through it for a long time. All the documents submitted for patent application have successfully passed the application.
After getting the patent number, he immediately began writing the paper.
The last paper about hcs-1 was also written by him. There are ready-made templates that can be applied. The writing of this paper did not cost too much time, and the whole paper was completed in less than three days.
Taking into account a series with hcs-1, this time, he still chose "Science" as the target of submission, and sent the manuscript to the mailbox of the editorial department of Science.
After the completion of the draft, Lu Zhou did not manage it again, and began to prepare for the upcoming meeting of the Max Planck Society in Germany.
However, compared to the casual attitude of Lu Zhou at the time of submission, this email made it difficult for the editorial department of Science.
Watering in Science is a lot of fun for the big cows. For example, David Shaw, who has worked with Lu Zhou on the theoretical model of electrochemical interface structure, is one of them.
"Science" also welcomes these big cows to pour water on themselves. After all, the equipment of these big cows is often enough for the peers to be jealous, the quality of the papers is guaranteed by academic reputation, and the "flow effect" is also brought.
However, the speed of “watering” that Professor Lu has submitted three times in the past six months is too amazing...
The problem is not the hcs-2 material itself, but most academic editors in the editorial department do not believe that Lu Zhou can make such a major change on the basis of hcs-1 materials in such a short period of time.
Consider the paper on the carbon-sulfur composite material published in the recent "jacs" and the sensational effect in the energy industry.
Anyone has reason to suspect that Professor Lu may have competed with Professor Stanley on the lithium-sulfur battery project and published some uncompleted experimental results with the revision of some experimental data.
It sounds a bit risky, but in academia, such things are not without precedent.
The editorial department of Science made up his mind and eventually kicked the ball to the reviewer.
This time, the professor responsible for reviewing the draft for Professor Lu is still Professor Bwandi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As before, this "unbelievable" professor, after receiving the review invitation, is still generously paying his own pockets. According to the experimental report provided by Lu Zhou, the experiment was repeated like an honest man.
However, regardless of whether he believes or not, the results are placed in front of him.
This time, he accidentally succeeded...