A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 212 Does the US have to pay patent fees to China for producing weapons?

Editorial office of Nature journal, London, UK
Editor-in-Chief Magdalena Skipper arrived at the office with a cup of coffee as usual, sat down at her computer, opened her email, and checked the submissions.

Unlike Science, which selects manuscripts through an academic committee, Nature's editors have greater decision-making power.

Magdalena Skipper herself is a PhD in genetics from Cambridge University. She has done scientific research for a period of time and has first-hand research experience. She has a high sensitivity to most submitted papers.

The international academic community is currently experiencing a surge of new research findings. I recently heard that a Chinese mathematician proved the existence problem of Yang-Mills.

Magdalena cleared her mind, opened the attachment to the first paper, checked the abstract and table of contents, and only began reading the actual content after confirming that there were no obvious flaws.

About two hours later, she roughly understood the content of the paper and then began to select a suitable academic editor for it.

Although she has a PhD in genetics from Cambridge, a PhD is just a threshold for scientific research, and she cannot fully understand many of the papers submitted to Nature.

After finishing a paper, Magdalena got up and walked around the office for a while, had a sip of coffee and a snack, before returning to her desk to open the next email.

Applications of Number Theory Geometry: Synthesis of an Ultrawide Bandgap Semiconductor Material

"Extra-wide bandage restriction?"

Magdalena clicked on the paper with great interest; she certainly knew what a breakthrough in semiconductor materials meant.

"Bandwidth gap 4.8-4.9 eV?"

"Critical breakdown field strength 8 MV/cm?"

"The on-resistance is only 1/3000 of that of silicon?"

Upon seeing the series of data presented in the abstract, Magdalena felt her head buzzing. As an editor of Nature magazine, she was quite knowledgeable about the cutting-edge technologies in various industries, and she certainly understood the significance of this string of numbers.

If this data is true, it will signify the dawn of a new world.

Of course, she still has doubts about the authenticity of these data. Over the years as editor-in-chief, she has seen far too many sensational and false data.

For example, a couple of years ago, scientists from China claimed to have synthesized room-temperature superconductivity, but it turned out to be nothing more than a farce. And then there are scientists from India…

Okay, Magdalena admits that India is a nightmare for academic editors.

So Magdalena made a point of checking out the paper's authors before reading the main text.

"Chen Hui?"

As it happened, she recognized the name; it was the Chinese mathematician who had recently proven the existence of the Yang-Mills equation.

"Isn't he a mathematician?"

"How did you get into semiconductor research?"

After confirming with detailed information such as the contact address that this person was indeed the mathematician she knew, Magdalena had even more questions in her mind.

Regardless, she decided to take a look at the paper first.

The paper is not complicated. It simply uses a mathematical model to build a generative adversarial network, trains the model to obtain the material structure, and finally synthesizes the material. The performance is surprisingly good.

At first glance, Magdalena sensed a strong Indian flavor in it; it didn't feel like an academic paper, but rather like science fiction.

However, the reference cited in this paper is a paper published by Chen Hui in the "Annals of Mathematics".

This undoubtedly demonstrates that the mathematical model in this paper is sound.

In that case, let's find an academic editor for it.

Magdalena did not act on her own initiative; she recalled scholars in the field of collaborating with nature.

Soon, she found a suitable candidate.

Jeffrey Foster holds a PhD in Materials Science from MIT, specializing in condensed matter physics or materials science. He currently works at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and has published numerous highly cited papers in journals such as Applied Physics Letters and the Journal of Applied Physics, making him very influential in the semiconductor field.

He himself has profound expertise in the semiconductor field and is fully qualified to review Chen Hui's paper.

……

In a small conference room at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory,
"This was a complete and utter failure!"

"China has already developed a sixth-generation fighter jet, and we've been researching missiles for three years and are still stuck in the same place," said Debra Rollison, the lab director, his face ashen. "What have you all been doing?"

"If a hot war really breaks out, we'll all be thrown into the Pacific Ocean!"

As a research institute directly under the U.S. Navy, he also faced immense pressure.

“Boss, I think we should start with the materials. Gallium nitride is simply not up to the task. Gallium nitride has a bandgap of only 3.4 eV, which is not enough to withstand higher voltages and power. It is impossible for it to complete the task of switching between 128 frequency points.”

Steven, the project manager for the Axe project, shrugged. "We need semiconductor materials with even higher performance!"

All eyes in the conference room turned to Jeffrey, while the other engineers and scientists who hadn't been called out secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

"?"

Jeffrey stood there stunned, but as a veteran of the research institute, he quickly came to his senses. "Gallium nitride is currently the best-performing semiconductor. It's unlikely that a better semiconductor material will emerge in the short term. I think we should focus on improving the design and manufacturing process."

The meeting was spent in a lot of buck-passing and shirking of responsibility. Two hours passed in the blink of an eye, and apart from everyone arguing heatedly about who should take the blame, nothing of any usefulness was discussed.

"Okay, let's break up the meeting."

Debra raised his hand to interrupt the arguing crowd, "I don't care what methods you use, I'll give you six more months at most. If you can't achieve the predetermined goal, all of you can get out of here."

Everyone in the research institute quietly left their seats. They were all middle-aged and needed to support their families. They valued this well-paid job, but they also understood that if they were driven away, who would do the work?
They were already the tallest of the short, so this threat didn't really affect them much.

Debra stood in the conference room, fuming as he watched the departing crowd, wishing he could smash the world to pieces with a single punch.

These guys leave the lab at four o'clock every day. If you ask them to work overtime, they start organizing a union to cause trouble, which affects normal work. Each time they cause trouble, they have to rest for at least a week, so he simply stopped caring about it.

With this attitude, how can we conduct scientific research? How can we produce results?
Debra was furious.

Jeffrey knew Debra was angry, but he didn't care.

Back in my office, I made myself a cup of coffee, went to the restroom, chatted with my colleague next door for a bit, and then returned to my seat. I lay down on the ergonomic chair, opened the footrest, and lay flat, then turned on my computer and started daydreaming.

He has already achieved enough, published numerous papers, and now he can simply rest on his laurels and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Feeling bored, Jeffrey opened his email, ready to pick out something interesting to deal with.

Suddenly, he saw a peer review invitation from Nature magazine.

Applications of Number Theory Geometry: Synthesis of an Ultrawide Bandgap Semiconductor Material

"Yo?"

"Is it possible to send you a pillow when you feel sleepy?"

Jeffrey clicked on it without hesitation. He figured he had nothing better to do than read the paper.

It was precisely because of this mindset that he was considered a high-level talent in the research institute, achieving more results than others.

Soon, the lazy Jeffrey sat up straight.

However, he quickly chuckled and lay back down.

This paper is too far-fetched. It's like creating a black box where you input the material you want and get its structure, then synthesize the material based on that structure.

This kind of thing probably appears in science fiction novels.

Jeffrey even glanced at the sender to confirm that it was indeed an email from the editor-in-chief of Nature magazine. However, he didn't reply to the email; instead, he unfolded his footrest again and continued to lie flat.

Gallium oxide?

Even after lying down, Jeffrey's mind kept replaying the material from that paper.

Gallium nitride has such high performance, so they naturally considered gallium oxide as well, but the results of the synthesis were unsatisfactory, and they did not continue to study it.

But looking at the molecular structure in that paper,

"Maybe it really works?"

Once the idea was born, it swayed in Jeffrey's mind like weeds and grew wildly.

Jeffrey sat up straight again with a whoosh and walked out of the office, startling his colleague next to him.

"What happened? Is your house on fire?"

Jeffrey ignored his colleague's sarcastic remarks.

Regardless of whether this is science fiction or not, materials science papers aren't that complicated. If you can't reproduce it, I'll just treat it as fake.

Now, Jeffrey is going to try to recreate the magical material described in this paper.

With Jeffrey's arrival, the lab became bustling with activity.
Jeffrey stood on the central island, already dressed in a white lab coat. In front of him were six monitoring screens. The ten members of the experimental team were already in their positions. To his left was materials engineer Nim, who was in charge of adjusting the MOVPE growth parameters. To his right was equipment operator Xerath, who was in charge of operating the pulsed laser deposition system. Behind them stood two doctoral students, who were using ultraviolet lamps to check the cleanliness of the sapphire substrate.

"The third experiment!"

Jeffrey's voice mingled with the hum of the centrifuge.

Although the paper described the results in as much detail as possible, they still failed twice. If the performance described in the paper hadn't been so enticing, he would have even replied to the Nature editorial office with "not reproducible".

"Nim, pay attention to temperature control; the error cannot exceed 0.01."

"Xerath, oxygen level, damn it, watch the oxygen level!"

Jeffrey's eyes were glued to the screen in front of him, staring intently at every minute change, and he impatiently directed the lab staff to make micro-adjustments.

On the screen directly in front of him was a series of fluctuating real-time data—the Raman spectrum of the growing gallium oxide film.

When the third 266nm laser swept across the substrate, he suddenly frowned: "The temperature gradient of the quartz tube is not right. Thane, reduce the argon flow rate to 150 sccm."

Jeffrey's roar echoed through the laboratory, and everyone watched with bated breath as the quartz boat in the reactor quietly grew, until it was fully formed!

"Shut down the reactor!"

Jeffrey shouted and couldn't wait to take out the crystal disc himself. Although he hadn't tested its performance yet, for some reason, just seeing the disc gave him a feeling that this thing could really work!
Intuition cannot replace data, so Jeffrey took the chip and personally went to the electron microscope to examine it.

Everyone held their breath as the electron beam from the transmission electron microscope pierced through the gallium oxide film.

The lattice stripes on the screen were initially blurry like a fog, but suddenly became clear after adjusting the focus. Inside the thin film, there was a periodically arranged array of oxygen vacancies, with each vacancy spaced exactly 0.5 nm apart, forming a natural carrier transport channel.

"This is simply a miracle of nature!"

With trembling hands, Jeffrey entered the calculation command, and the simulation software instantly displayed the breakdown electric field curve—the value of 8.0 MV/cm shot into Jeffrey's eyes like a bullet, differing from the 8.1 MV/cm in the paper by only 0.1.

Next, he conducted tests on conduction loss and energy efficiency.

Without a doubt, these data are all less than one ten-thousandth of the error in the paper, and the authors of this paper have truly discovered a revolutionary semiconductor material!

After Jeffrey was shocked, a huge surprise followed.

Everyone else in the lab stared wide-eyed. Having studied semiconductors for decades, they certainly understood the immense changes this tiny chip would bring to the world.

Picking up the chip, he hurried toward the office of the person in charge, Debra.

"Continue preparing the samples!"

Boom boom boom!
Jeffrey pounded on Debra's office door. Normally, he would never have dared to be so presumptuous, but today, he believed that Debra would not blame him no matter what.

"The door isn't closed." A voice, its tone ambiguous, came from inside the office.

Jeffrey pushed the door open and went in. "Debra, we did it!"

"What worked?"

Debra, who was about to get angry, was interrupted by these words and looked completely bewildered.

"We've found a new semiconductor with a bandgap of 4.9 eV, nearly 50% higher than gallium nitride, and a breakdown field strength... Our missiles are saved!"

"what?"

Debra sprang up with a whoosh, looked at the thin slice in Jeffrey's hand, and was overjoyed.

"Didn't you just say it was impossible to accomplish? How come you suddenly made a new discovery?"

He didn't doubt that Jeffrey was lying, because if it was a lie, it would be too easy to expose.

"Nature just sent me a manuscript awaiting review!"

Who are the authors of the paper?

Have you applied for a patent yet?

Without Jeffrey saying anything, Debra astutely grasped the key issue.

Jeffrey quickly opened his email; he hadn't paid any attention to this issue before.

"He is a Chinese scholar named Chen Hui."

"Chinese scholar?"

Debra frowned, and without waiting for Jeffrey to say anything more, he dialed his contacts at the patent office.

"What? A patent has already been applied for?"

Debra's face had turned ashen.

According to patent law, if A applies for a patent, B's subsequent patent application is invalid. Furthermore, it is illegal to produce a patented product without authorization!

"So, you're telling me I have to pay China a patent fee for every missile I produce, is that right?"

Debra hung up the phone and looked at Jeffrey. As a former soldier, he wanted nothing more than to pull out his gun and shoot this piece of trash in front of him.

Jeffrey also suddenly realized the problem.

"But this new material can really solve our problem, it can perfectly solve our problem!"

Jeffrey said weakly.

"damn it!"

"waste!"

"roll!"

Debra's roar echoed through the office.

(End of this chapter)