Super Rich: Rebirth of the Top-Tier Rich Second Generation

Just three days later.

Near King's Cross Station in London, England.

The Springer Nature Publishing Group building.

Inside the Springer Nature publishing group building, the editorial office of Nature Energy remains brightly lit.

March in London remains rainy and overcast.

The hazy fog made people inexplicably irritable.

At the spacious workstations in the editorial office of Nature Energy.

Editor Dr. Sarah Mitchell was holding a perfectly warm cup of black coffee, her brow furrowed as she stared at the computer screen in front of her.

As a senior editor of a top global academic journal.

Sarah's daily work involves sifting through the countless submissions from all over the world, selecting the valuable first drafts like sifting through sand.

This job is tedious and tedious, and there's very little of real value in it.

"Another one of those low-quality articles that claims to increase cycle life by less than 5% by adding a tiny amount of trace elements..."

Frustrated, Sarah dragged the mouse and clicked the "reject" option on a manuscript from an Indian university.

In this field, the vast majority of so-called "innovations" are...

It's nothing more than adding some cumin to the leftovers of our predecessors, stir-frying them, and then daring to claim that we've prepared a Manchu Han Imperial Feast.

By changing the doping material and adjusting a few parameters, the cycle life can be increased by less than three percent, and then it can be packaged as a "major breakthrough".

She stretched and glanced at the time in the bottom right corner of the screen; there was less than an hour left before she had to leave work.

She decided to read one last manuscript before packing up to pick up her daughter, who was about to get out of school.

Open the next unread email in the new inbox.

Authors: Yan Jiang, Qinglan Shen.

Institution: Yanqiong Technology / Huaxia Tsinghua University.

"Shuimu University? At least it's a top-tier university article. Hopefully, it's not just rehashing old news."

Sarah casually took a sip of coffee, her gaze expertly sliding to the summary section.

However, when her gaze swept over the key data points in the summary...

next second.

"Pfft—cough cough cough!"

Sarah nearly spat the mouthful of coffee she had just swallowed onto the keyboard, choking and coughing repeatedly.

He quickly pulled out a tissue to cover his mouth, but his eyes were fixed on the screen as if he had seen a ghost.

[...Under optimal laboratory conditions, the measured mass energy density of this nanocomposite solid-state electrolyte battery remained stable between 1035 and 1050 Wh/kg...]

[...Under 5C high-rate charge-discharge, the capacity retention rate is as high as 95.2% after 5000 cycles...]

[...The estimated cost of material preparation is only twice that of existing commercial ternary lithium batteries]

[It also exhibits excellent structural stability over a wide temperature range from -50°C to 80°C...]

"Twice" is the conservative figure disclosed by the paper.

The actual cost is only one-tenth of that of existing routes.

My finger hovered over the mouse wheel, frozen for several seconds.

After a brief mental freeze, Sarah's first thought was: This is absurd!

It’s ridiculous.

This doesn't resemble a normal scientific research paper at all; it's more like an industrial fantasy concocted by some madman.

1050Wh/kg?

Are you kidding me!

The current state of solid-state batteries researched by mainstream laboratories worldwide is such that achieving a stable energy density of 400Wh/kg for a complete battery cell is enough to launch a press conference, secure funding, and make headlines in the industry.

You're telling me now that you directly scored over 1000?

The cost is only twice as much?

It also provides 5C rate, 5000 cycles, 95.2% capacity retention, extreme temperature range, and controllable cost.

Any one of these metrics alone would be enough to cause a sensation in the industry.

Now, they've been crammed into the same battery.

This is not an improvement.

This is like flipping the whole track table.

"That's simply impossible."

Sarah sneered, her mouse already hovering over the red "Reject" button.

But a millisecond before pressing the left mouse button, her peripheral vision swept over the author's institution, Tsinghua University, once again.

Would someone from the Tsinghua University Physics Department risk their academic reputation with such a flawed claim?

Her professional editor's intuition made her abruptly stop what she was doing.

"Just treat it like reading a science fiction novel," Sarah sighed and opened the PDF file attached to the full text.

Ten minutes later, the sneer on Sarah's face disappeared.

Half an hour later, her body involuntarily leaned forward.

She was practically glued to the monitor, her eyes wide open, and she even had to hold her breath.

She didn't understand all the theoretical derivations, but she did understand the extremely rigorous and logically consistent electrochemical test charts.

I finally understood the incredibly perfect atomic arrangement structure under cryo-electron microscopy.

I have a better understanding of the core mechanism known as the "controllable macromolecular self-assembly interface"!

There were no flaws.

At least in the eyes of this senior editor, the data chain is tightly interlocked, and there is no gap that can be fabricated by photo editing and forgery!

"God..." Sarah murmured, her palms already starting to feel damp.

If even half of the data in this paper is true.

The existing landscape of the global new energy, energy storage, and even aerospace sectors will be completely overturned by this PDF of less than fifty pages!

This kind of manuscript is beyond what she, as an editor, can handle alone.

Sarah didn't hesitate at all and went directly to the system's backend permissions.

This manuscript, which originally had to wait in line for several weeks for initial review, was marked with a heavy red star indicating "Urgent"!

She then sent an internal explanation to the editor-in-chief.

The content consists of only one sentence.

[It is recommended to initiate high-priority peer review immediately, as this manuscript may involve disruptive technological breakthroughs.]

After completing the upgrade process, Sarah opened the reviewer database.

Under normal circumstances, editors will send out multiple invitations to ensure that they ultimately receive a sufficient number of valid peer review comments.

She opened the global expert database and her fingers flew across the keyboard.

But this time, she was extra careful in selecting experts.

America, Germany, Japan, South Korea.

She singled out four top experts who are truly the "leading figures" in the global solid-state battery field.

Materials systems, interface physics, electrochemical testing, and industrial engineering.

The four reviewers perfectly cover the four most critical dimensions of the paper.

I attached the encrypted link to the manuscript and clicked the highest priority review invitation to send it.

She only realized that it was long past her workday when the last email was successfully sent.

The rain is still falling outside the window.

It was time for my daughter to get out of school.

Sarah picked up her phone, sent a message to her family, and then sat back down at her computer.

She did not leave.

He just stared at the red marker on the screen, the same thought repeating in his mind.

If this is true.

That would change the entire industry.

......

There is an unwritten rule in academia.

Invitations to peer review from top-tier journals.

Those truly at the top of the pyramid often delay for three to five days due to numerous projects and packed schedules, or even have their doctoral students review the applications and then politely decline.

But within forty-eight hours after Sarah extended the invitation.

These four top scholars, located in four different time zones around the world, surprisingly all clicked "Accept".

This is extremely rare in the history of Nature Energy.

The first person to open the full text was Professor James Crawford of the Department of Materials Science at MIT, America.

This hot-tempered academic old stubbornness is notorious in the industry for his sharp tongue.

It was a sunny afternoon in Boston.

James was sitting in his office, ready to throw a terribly unoriginal doctoral dissertation proposal in the faces of those idiot students, and while he was at it, he'd say something like:

Are you insulting my intelligence?!

Just then, a new email popped up in the lower right corner of the computer screen.

From Nature Energy.

Red emergency sign.

James hadn't originally planned to deal with it immediately.

But after opening the email marked with a red emergency symbol and glancing at the summary,

1050Wh/kg.

5C multiplier.

Five thousand cycles.

95.2% capacity retention.

"Where did this madman come from?"

James frowned and clicked to read the full article.

Five minutes later, he picked up the phone on the table and casually threw the student's thesis proposal into the trash can.

Then he yelled at his assistant on the phone:

"Cancel all my meetings for the next three days! No one is allowed in my office!"

The person on the other end of the phone was clearly taken aback.

"Professor, does that include the closed-door discussion at the Materials Society tomorrow afternoon?"

"all."

James stared at the screen, his voice rising a few decibels in impatience.

"Also, no one is allowed to enter the office without my permission."

After saying that, he hung up the phone.

For the remainder of the time, James did not leave his seat.

The old professor devoured the paper from China word by word, like a ravenous madman.

When I read the variational proof in Part Three, which Jiang Yan had deliberately simplified.

James grabbed a handful of pencils from his messy desk, pulled over some white paper, picked up the Texas Instruments scientific calculator on the table, and began frantically working backwards to verify his calculations.

Are the standards for calculating quality consistent?

[Was preheating energy consumption excluded from the low-temperature test?]

Are the cycling curves from the same battery cell?

But as he continued reading, he crossed out those questions one by one.

It's as if the author anticipated all possible angles of attack.

Each key conclusion is followed by a corresponding control experiment.

The original record for each performance curve can be found in the supplementary materials.

Even the drift error of the test equipment, which is most easily overlooked, has been listed separately and calibrated.

The disdain on James's face gradually disappeared.

When he read the third part of the paper, the variational proof that Jiang Yan had deliberately simplified, he finally stopped.

"This isn't right."

He stared at one of the formulas and muttered to himself.

"Under these boundary conditions, the energy functional cannot be so clean."

James grabbed a pen and paper and started checking the dimensions.

Then comes the limiting condition.

Next comes the first-order variation of functionals and the stability criterion.

The draft paper quickly covered half of the desk.

The coffee on the corner of the table had gone cold, but he hadn't touched it at all.

Half an hour later, James turned on his workstation and rebuilt the interface transmission model from the paper.

Instead of using the parameters provided by the author directly, he started by re-entering them one by one from the most basic lattice constant, interface barrier, and ion mobility.

The program is running for the first time.

Error message.

Second run.

Numerical divergence.

Instead of being disappointed, James leaned back, a cold smile reappearing on his face.

"I knew it."

However, when he re-examined the code, he found that the problem was not in the paper.

He adopted a default boundary setting from the traditional perturbation model.

This paper, however, takes a completely different approach than that old path.

James remained silent for a few seconds.

He deleted the original boundary conditions and reconstructed the constraints according to the variational approach in the paper.

The program runs again.

The progress bar is moving forward slowly.

The sunlight outside the window gradually disappeared.

Boston is getting late at night.

The office lights were off, only the light from the monitor fell on James's wrinkled face.

He repeatedly checked the units, boundary conditions, and convergence accuracy.

The last set of numerical curves finally appeared in the center of the screen.

The verification results are in.