A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 207 Next-Generation Semiconductor Materials
The supercomputing resources promised by Youwei Group arrived on the same day, and Chen Hui could use them as soon as he logged into the server.

Two days later, Schultz sent the model program code to Chen Hui and brought him good news: Schultz had reached a cooperation agreement with Microsoft and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry to jointly conduct research on new superconducting materials.

After exchanging information via email, both parties began training their respective models.

After Academician E Weinan and his team spent three days and nights reviewing Schultz's code, Chen Hui finally put the model and training data onto the Atas supercomputer to begin training.

Combining the data collected from Professor Xiao Meng's laboratory in the early stage, as well as some open data obtained by Academician E Weinan from other laboratories through his connections, after screening and confirmation, a total of nearly one terabyte of training data on semiconductor research was retained.

Everything was on track, and the laboratories on the third floor of the physics department began to get busy.

Chloe and Li Zehan also joined Academician E Weinan's team and devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the research project.

On the contrary, Chen Hui suddenly became free. Only occasionally would Academician E Weinan have some questions about the model or encounter some problems during training, and then he would come to discuss them with Chen Hui.

Chen Hui finally had time to continue his research on the mass gap problem.

Scientific research knows no time.
Half a month has passed in the blink of an eye.

These days, apart from attending two classes a week and occasionally discussing with Academician E Weinan, Chen Hui has been continuing the proof and deduction of the mass gap problem. Now he can vaguely see the glittering light of that pearl, and he knows that he is getting closer and closer to picking that pearl.

I put down my pen and looked out the window.
Chen Hui had a thought and summoned the control panel.

[Host: Chen Hui
Chinese Level 2 (23%)

Mathematics Level 4 (18%)

English Level 3 (51%)

Physics Level 4 (3%)

Chemistry Level 2 (37%)

Biology Level 2 (0%)

Physical Education Level 2 (0%)

Geography Level 2 (0%)

History Level 2 (0%)

Politics Level 3 (11%)

To Chen Hui's delight, his chemistry proficiency has improved rapidly, reaching 37%, due to his research in materials science and reading many chemistry-related papers.

With his current base attributes, leveling up his subject proficiency by 2 levels is already very fast.

My proficiency in math and physics has been steadily improving these days, and I've also made considerable progress in Chinese and English. It's normal to inevitably come into contact with Chinese and English when studying papers.

Politics, however, left Chen Hui both amused and exasperated. It had quietly risen to level three, even though he hadn't done anything!
Looking at the sports section, Chen Hui felt somewhat helpless. He had recently felt his physical fitness declining, and it seemed that he needed to put exercising on his agenda.

However, let's wait until the quality gap issue is resolved before making any further decisions.

Chen Hui's mind raced. He turned on his computer and checked his email. He checked his email every afternoon at three o'clock. He not only communicated with Schultz frequently via email, but Dennis would also occasionally send him emails to discuss the progress of the Navier-Stokes equations.

Unfortunately, Chen Hui's energy is limited, and his progress on the Navier-Stokes equations is not ideal at present.

I opened my email, and sure enough, there was a new email.

However, it wasn't Schultz or Dennis who sent it; rather, it was the Chinese Mathematical Society.

This is an invitation.

The annual meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society will be held in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province this May. Chen Hui has been invited to give a presentation on the latest research results.

Since he had already attended the annual meeting of the European Mathematical Society, there was no reason not to attend the annual meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society. Chen Hui immediately contacted the relevant staff using the contact information on the invitation letter and agreed to upload his report content at least half a month in advance before the deadline.

Chen Hui was also somewhat conflicted about uploading the content. The existence proof of the Yang-Mills equation had already been presented three times. If he were to share it again, it would feel like he was relying on a single trick for everything.

However, it is already mid-March, and he is not confident that he can make a breakthrough in the study of mass gaps within half a month.

The timing of this invitation was indeed a bit awkward.

"Teacher, the thirteenth experiment has begun. Would you like to go and take a look?"

Just as Chen Hui was pondering, Chloe, with her brown hair, walked into the office, her blue eyes filled with exhaustion.

In the past two weeks, they have conducted twelve sets of experiments.

Material synthesis was performed based on the model's predictions, but the final test results were unsatisfactory. Therefore, the parameters were adjusted, the training data was corrected, and the model was trained again. Then, the next experiment was conducted based on the results.

"go."

Chen Hui's heart sank; he knew he had to go and see for himself.

Chloe's condition also shows that everyone in the lab is exhausted. The initial excitement is about to wear off, and if no results are achieved soon, the pace should be slowed down and experiments should be conducted more slowly.

Scientific research is inherently a slow and meticulous process, especially materials science. Before Chen Hui developed this model, materials science was more of an empirical discipline. It involved constantly experimenting, summarizing patterns, and conducting the next experiment. If you were lucky, the synthesized new material would meet your expectations.

Then came applying for patents and publishing papers...

As for industrialization, that's the business of capitalists; it's none of their concern.

Of course, so far, Chen Hui's model has not played a significant role. They are still conducting experiments with no results. The only good news is that the sample data they obtain is better each time than the last.

Even if this progress is minimal, it is still good news.

"E Lao."

Upon arriving at the lab, Chen Hui greeted E Weinan, who had been leading the research with Professor Xiao Meng these past few days.

A noticeable look of fatigue appeared in E Weinan's eyes.

This area is completely separated from the office area. The air is filtered by high-efficiency filters to be almost silent, with only a low, constant hiss of airflow emanating from the clean bench. The light here is cool white, illuminating the edges and corners of every stainless steel and quartz vessel, reflecting an inorganic luster. There is no chemical smell in the air, only a very faint scent of special ceramics that have been sintered at high temperatures.

Yang Chi was wearing a full cleanroom suit and standing in front of the control panel of a precision tube furnace.

Complex parameters flashed on the screen: temperature curves, gas flow rate, and pressure readings. The furnace itself was covered with a silver insulation layer, with only a section of transparent quartz tube in the center exposed. At this moment, the tube was empty, but intense heat was brewing deep inside the furnace.

Wearing heavy rubber gloves, Yang Chi carefully opened a specially made double-sealed container, inside which was the "heart" of this experiment—electronic-grade high-purity metallic gallium.

It is liquid at room temperature, like a condensed bead of mercury, but it shimmers with a deeper, almost blue-toned silvery-gray luster.

The gallium beads were transferred with extreme gentleness into a high-purity quartz boat that had been soaked in aqua regia, repeatedly rinsed with ultrapure water, and degassed by calcination at high temperatures, because any trace amounts of sodium, potassium, or transition metal impurities could ruin the electrical properties of this future semiconductor material.

The quartz boat was smoothly fed into the pretreatment chamber inside the glove box, and the vacuum pump emitted a low hum as it evacuated the air.

Subsequently, high-purity argon gas was injected and purged, and this process was repeated three times. Only after confirming that the oxygen and water vapor content were below one part per hundred million was the quartz boat transferred to the sample inlet port connected to the tubular furnace.

"Initiate transfer!"

Xiao Meng confirmed in a low voice.

With the pneumatic valve open, the quartz boat, protected by the argon gas flow, silently slid into the central area of ​​the quartz furnace tube, which had been preheated to 800 degrees Celsius.

The furnace temperature rises steadily under the monitoring of precision thermocouples. Through the high-temperature observation window, the furnace chamber can be seen gradually changing from dark red to bright orange-yellow, and finally stabilizing at around the target temperature of 1200 degrees Celsius, emitting an incandescent white light that illuminates the quartz tube like a molten pillar of light.

This was not the first time Chen Hui had witnessed the experimental process. He stared intently at the gas control unit, where ultra-high purity oxygen, purified through multiple molecular sieves and metal getters, began to be injected into the argon carrier gas at an extremely precise and minute flow rate.

The oxygen ratio is strictly controlled to ensure sufficient oxidation while avoiding excessively rapid reactions that could lead to crystal defects or stress cracking.

Chen Hui knew that this time they were going to prepare gallium oxide. According to the results of the model, this oxide has a wider bandgap and a higher critical breakdown field strength.

This is also where the power of this model lies.

Simply input the target fraction class, and the generator can output the desired material structure.

Previous materials science research relied on experience and luck, requiring thousands of experiments to finally succeed, or sometimes never to succeed at all.

But now, they only need to synthesize materials based on the output material structure.

Of course, at present, this model has some effect, but its accuracy is also limited.

"This time we should see a significant improvement!"

Eweinan muttered to himself, having had a premonition during this model revision.

Of course, he said the same thing after each of the previous revisions.

Inside the furnace tube, the argon-oxygen mixture flows and diffuses turbulently at high temperatures.

Inside the quartz boat, the silver-gray gallium bead had already completely melted, and the surface tension at high temperatures caused it to form a perfect spherical crown.

When the first highly reactive oxygen molecule strikes the surface of liquid gallium, gallium atoms combine with oxygen atoms to form extremely small gallium oxide nuclei on the melt surface. With a continuous and stable supply of oxygen, the nuclei grow and spread along specific crystal planes.

This process needs to be extremely slow—times measured in hours. Yang Chi checks the screen of the residual gas analyzer connected to the furnace tube outlet from time to time to ensure that no abnormal byproduct peaks appear and that the reaction always proceeds on the ideal path.

Three hours later, the furnace temperature began to slowly decrease according to the preset program. The oxygen supply had already stopped, and the furnace tube was refilled with pure argon gas. The temperature dropped to a safe range, and the quartz boat was automatically transferred back to the cooling chamber of the glove box.

When Yang Chi finally retrieved the quartz boat from the inert atmosphere of the glove box, the scene before him was completely different.

The liquid silver bead disappeared, replaced by a thin sheet about a few millimeters square, with uniform thickness. Its color was a unique light yellowish-brown, and its edges were almost translucent. When held up to the light inside the glove box, one could vaguely see the dense, slightly glassy texture inside.

The surface of the thin sheet is as smooth as a mirror, without any bubbles or cracks. This is the result of precise control of the reaction rate and temperature. Although he majored in physics, Yang Chi has conducted hundreds or even thousands of material preparation experiments, and his skills are quite good.

Yang Chi carefully picked up the still-warm "crystal" with tweezers and placed it into another specially made sample box filled with argon gas. This was just the beginning. Next, the crystal would be sent to the adjacent testing room to undergo X-ray diffraction to examine its crystal structure, Hall effect testing to examine its carrier concentration and mobility, and atomic force microscopy to scan its surface roughness...

Everyone breathed a slight sigh of relief; the material preparation was quite successful this time. However, they did not have high expectations for the material itself.

This scene has been repeated twelve times.

"The lattice constant of gallium oxide is 103.8!"

A gasp broke the tense atmosphere in the laboratory; it came from Deng Ting, who had been staring at the instrument screen.

However, in the first test, when the crystal structure was examined by X-rays, gallium oxide exhibited a uniqueness far exceeding the normal level.

Generally speaking, the band gap is proportional to the superposition value J of the electron clouds of adjacent atoms. The larger the lattice constant, the smaller J, the smaller the band gap, and the larger the band gap!
The lattice constant of silicon, a mature semiconductor material in the industry, is 5.43, and that of gallium arsenide is 5.65. However, the lattice constant of gallium oxide jumps directly from two digits to three digits, which is almost 20 times that of silicon!
"No need to continue testing, just power it on and measure the data!"

Xiao Meng made a quick decision; this was the simplest and fastest testing method, although it might damage the sample. But she couldn't wait to get the parameters of this thin slice. Anyway, they had already mastered the preparation method, so even if it was damaged, they could just prepare another one.

"I come!"

Having just finished preparing the materials for several hours, Yang Chi disregarded his fatigue and rushed forward to personally conduct the experiment.

E Weinan also quickly arrived at the testing room, his eyes already brimming with joy. The extraordinary performance of gallium oxide seemed to be foreshadowing something.

Soon, under Yang Chi's operation, a series of data were measured.

Its bandgap is 4.8-4.9 eV, far exceeding the current mainstream semiconductor bandgap of 1.1 eV for silicon, 3.25 eV for silicon carbide, and 3.4 eV for gallium nitride.

临界击穿场强8MV/cm，是碳化硅（3 MV/cm）的2.7倍，硅（0.3 MV/cm）的27倍！
导通电阻理论值仅为硅的1/3000、碳化硅的1/6，在相同电压下损耗降低98%！

Furthermore, gallium oxide can be grown into large-size single crystals using the melt method, which will significantly reduce costs and allow for faster single crystal growth. This is definitely an outstanding new semiconductor material!
Fourth-generation semiconductor materials!

As data was measured one after another, everyone who witnessed this moment understood that a new king had emerged in the semiconductor industry!
"We...succeeded?"

Chloe seemed a little incredulous.

The laboratory, however, was already filled with jubilation.
Chen Hui smiled happily; he now knew what achievements he would be reporting at the annual meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society in May.

(End of this chapter)