Black technology: a super empire spanning two worlds

Chapter 84 [Three Paths Going Forward in Parallel]

Xiao Yu looked around at everyone and said, "In my personal search for room-temperature superconductivity over the years, I have roughly identified three paths that can be tried. One is to synthesize new materials, the second is to improve existing materials, and the third is to control materials under special conditions."

After a pause, Xiao Yu turned to dismantling them one by one and said, "The second one is obvious. For example, we can improve the quality of existing copper oxide high-temperature superconducting materials and perform chemical doping and other transformations to see if we can obtain superconductors with higher critical temperatures."

"The third special condition control is to use high temperature, high pressure, magnetic field, optical field, electric field and other methods to control the state of the material and form a superconducting state at a higher temperature."

"The most difficult approach is to synthesize new materials, because there is no reliable experience to tell us where room-temperature superconductivity is. We can only explore in the dark. Whether we can find it depends largely on luck."

At this time, a young man present saw the boss pause and couldn't help but say: "Can we look for room-temperature superconductors in organic materials?"

Hearing this, Xiao Yu smiled and looked at the young technical development employee: "It's a feasible idea. After all, there are a lot of organic materials, and the probability is also greater. Maybe one or two room-temperature superconductors may emerge from them."

Xiao Yu then changed the subject: "However, it is very easy to obtain weak diamagnetism or a decrease in resistivity in organic materials and some carbon materials. Some years ago, some people believed that carbon nanotubes had room-temperature superconductivity of 262 Kelvin or even 636 Kelvin, but it can only be said to be 'suspected' because the data only showed a decrease in resistance, and zero resistance and diamagnetism do not exist at the same time."

He added: "Of course, materials based on carbon can be varied, and many colleagues in the industry are also looking for room-temperature superconductors in this direction. Some scientists have designed multiple benzene ring compounds, multiple footballene structures, carbon nanotube-coated footballene, etc. based on their intuition. These materials are difficult to synthesize with the current level of technology, but at least it is a direction, and it does not rule out the possibility of finding one or two room-temperature superconductors."

Finally, Xiao Yu looked around at everyone and said with a smile: "If you ask me which of the three major directions of synthesizing new materials, improving existing materials, and regulating materials under special conditions should I choose, my answer is that only children choose, but adults should of course choose all three directions and move forward in parallel."

"In the past, I didn't have the financial means, so I could only tinker with it myself. But now it's different. There is enough funding, and I'm not afraid that all the money I invested will go down the drain. Going all in is a kind of wisdom, just do it."

Xiao Yu gathered everyone together for this seminar today in order to establish the direction and set the tone.

Of course, he doesn't expect to really find room-temperature superconducting materials. He does all this to pave the way for when he really "finds" room-temperature superconducting materials, including establishing himself as a super genius.

In fact, Xiao Yu didn't want to establish such a character for himself, but in the future, in order to "move" various black technologies from Blue Star to Earth, a character like a super genius is really indispensable.

Since he is a super genius, it is relatively more acceptable for him to create some technological products that are ahead of their time.

Xiao Yu looked at everyone and said, "Combining the three major ideas, I will give you four specific implementation paths. You just need to follow the directions I said. The first is to use ultra-high pressure to generate new material structures that cannot be obtained under normal pressure. Among them, materials with more hydrogen may be room-temperature superconductors."

This is not Xiao Yu's first idea. As early as 2015, his peers in the industry had been trying and had indeed found many superconductors with extremely high temperatures. It was just that the high-pressure conditions made testing extremely difficult.

Xiao Yu continued in a clear and logical manner: "The second is to start from the microscopic mechanism of existing superconductors, study which interactions help to increase the superconducting temperature, and then redesign and construct new materials to increase the critical temperature with the help of multiple interactions. However, it should be noted that the trouble is that we do not understand the microscopic mechanism of most materials called 'unconventional superconductors'."

"The third is to think outside the box of three-dimensional materials and look for room-temperature superconductivity in composite materials or two-dimensional interfaces, or to reassemble atomic building blocks in the one-dimensional world."

In fact, scientists have already used this method to discover new superconductors or increase the original superconducting temperature of a material under a certain combination of two materials, but the critical temperature is still too low. Xiao Yu drank a sip of mineral water and then said, "The last one is the exclusive advantage that only we have at present. With the help of powerful AI technology, AI can assist scientific research and conduct training through a huge database of known superconducting material properties. Even if the superconducting mechanism is unknown, it can help predict new superconductors, and even room temperature superconductors are not impossible."

This is also one of the reasons Xiao Yu gave to explain his ability to discover room-temperature superconducting materials within the year. The fact that he was able to discover it so quickly was not only due to his own silent research for so many years, but also due to the AI-assisted research, which greatly improved the efficiency of screening and matching. He first used AI to predict the data with a high probability of the existence of superconductors, and then gave priority to experiments on these data.

It is precisely because of AI-assisted scientific research that room-temperature superconducting materials were discovered so quickly.

For Xiao Yu, these things were just a cover-up for him to eventually be able to legitimately develop room-temperature superconducting materials, making the emergence of such materials appear more scientific and reasonable. He did not expect that the team in front of him could really find room-temperature superconducting materials.

……

Two hours later, Xiao Yu completed the task assignment and left the Basic Applied Research Department. He returned to his office in AVIC Linfei and called Chen Zaiqing over.

This person was one of Xiao Yu's early subordinates who followed him to start his business. He previously worked as a senior executive at Lingjing Technology. Now he has been fired by Xiao Yu from Lingji Technology and transferred to AVIC Linfei as CEO, responsible for the company's operations management.

After waiting for a while, Chen Zaiqing came to his office: "Mr. Xiao."

Xiao Yu directly ordered: "I have decided to build a large high-energy laser array in the company's R&D center. The demand for electric energy will be very huge. You should go to the Linzhou Power Bureau to communicate in advance. Our electricity demand in the second half of the year may be very large."

Chen Zaiqing nodded and said, "Okay, leave it to me."

Regarding the problem that room-temperature superconducting materials cannot be mass-produced, Xiao Yu chose to cite the high preparation cost as the reason. The reason is that when preparing room-temperature superconducting materials, it is necessary to aggregate ultra-high energy laser arrays, which requires a terrifying amount of electricity, resulting in excessively high costs and making large-scale mass production impossible.

The factory that prepares room-temperature superconducting materials must rely on artificial intelligence technology to achieve unmanned operations. On the grounds of confidentiality to prevent the leakage of core preparation technology, no one is allowed to enter the preparation factory without Xiao Yu's permission.

In this way, outsiders will not know the truth that a large amount of electric energy supplied is actually wasted in the preparation factory. This is also a waste that must be done and cannot be saved, because it ensures that AVIC Linfei Company actually consumes so much electric energy on the books, which is reflected in the high cost of preparing room-temperature superconducting materials.

In fact, if Xiao Yu didn't want to waste the electricity, he could also secretly purchase some large-scale energy storage ultra-high energy density batteries from Blue Star, and then secretly bring them to the manufacturing factory to recycle the electricity and store it in ultra-high energy density batteries.

However, there is no need for that. It's like when you are worth 1 million, you won't go through so much trouble for 100 yuan.

Controlled nuclear fusion has already been achieved in the Blue Star world, and obtaining the same amount of electricity is much cheaper there. If you really lack this energy, you can go to the Blue Star world and buy a small nuclear fusion reactor. The energy released can support Linzhou City's electricity consumption for decades.

……

(End of this chapter)