Chapter 850 318.651kPa! Room temperature superconductivity!
It is not difficult to synthesize a material through nanotechnology.
But it is a very difficult job to finely control each area of the material, to incorporate silver and chromium elements while also fine-tuning the stacking and distortion of the material surface, and to ensure that everything is the same.
While waiting for the copper oxide substrate to be processed from the electron beam evaporation coating machine, Xu Chuan also prepared the doping materials and equipment.
After waiting for about two hours, after the electron beam evaporation coating machine completed the surface crystal film treatment on the copper oxide substrate, he transferred the substrate to the SC laser-guided plasma vapor deposition system.
After the ultra-high purity silver and chromium materials are processed in oxygen-isolated equipment, they are also sent to this equipment at the same time, waiting to be doped.
The so-called SC laser-guided plasma vapor deposition system is the core of completing room temperature superconductivity.
Its whole body is divided into two parts.
The first part is to melt and evaporate the material to be doped through direct current discharge. When the vapor encounters the surrounding gas, it will cool or react, thereby forming nanoparticles.
The second part is to use the path of direct vapor-crystal conversion, using ultraviolet laser to guide the quenching of these doped vapors into exotic alloys that are stable at the nanoscale, and use them as building blocks to print into 3D nanostructure arrays, uniform Deployed on the surface of copper oxide-based superconducting materials.
This is the core part of manufacturing copper oxide-based chromium-silver series room temperature superconducting materials.
To put it simply, the principle is somewhat similar to chip manufacturing, but the process is not that complicated.
The chip is engraved with logic gates on the wafer using a photolithography machine, while the manufacturing of copper oxide-based chromium-silver superconducting materials is done by using an SC laser-guided plasma vapor deposition system to guide doping materials to complete the nanostructure array on the substrate.
The former requires multiple etches, while the latter is enough once.
But in any case, for the manufacturing of a material, its manufacturing process can be said to be very complicated.
Not only is it complicated, but all the equipment it requires is extremely expensive.
For example, the price of a top-notch vacuum electron beam evaporation coating machine exceeds 5 million, and the price of an SC laser-guided plasma vapor deposition system exceeds 10 million.
If it were possible to pull out enough single crystal silicon ingots for thousands of chips at one time, just like the manufacturing of single crystal silicon, it would still be worthwhile to use these expensive equipment to make room temperature superconducting materials.
But in fact, when making room-temperature superconducting materials in the laboratory, only a small number of 'samples' can be produced each time.
This is also the main reason why it is difficult to industrialize copper oxide-based chromium-silver series room temperature superconducting materials.
After all, laboratory products and industrial products are two completely different concepts.
Just because a variety of top-notch equipment can be used in the laboratory does not mean that the same can be achieved in large-scale production.
However, research on industrialization is a matter for the industry. As long as the technology of room temperature superconducting materials appears, the industry will naturally invest a lot of money in trying it.
Even if large-scale production cannot be achieved in the end, a certain degree of commercial use will certainly be achieved.
At least in various high-precision products, the application of room temperature superconducting materials, aside from performance, is a huge gimmick in itself and can bring massive benefits.
So Xu Chuan is not worried about this aspect of work.
No matter how difficult industrialization is, as long as a product has high practical value, someone will always find a way to solve it.
What he wants to do is to solve the defects of copper oxide-based chromium-silver series room temperature superconducting materials.
Substrate treatment, silver-chromium doping, argon protection, stacking and twisting of the material surface to create a uniform thickness in nanometers to obtain the required dielectric strength and localized electron delocalization.
After staying in the laboratory for two and a half days, it was not until one o'clock in the afternoon on the third day that Xu Chuan's tense nerves relaxed.
Looking at the computer connected to the argon protection device, he controlled the instrument to stop the operation of the equipment.
The argon gas protecting the internal materials was extracted, and the high temperature quickly dissipated. In the high-temperature-resistant ceramic material vessel, a silver-gray sheet less than ten centimeters was lying there quietly.
This is the first piece of "copper oxide-based chromium-silver system room temperature superconducting material" that he worked for two and a half days before successfully replicating it.
Wearing laboratory gloves and using special tweezers, he carefully took out the film from the argon-protected tube furnace. The R&D staff beside him quickly handed over glassware with buffer material.
"Test the performance of this material."
After letting out a long sigh of relief, Xu Chuan opened his mouth and gave instructions.
He did not do the testing experiment himself because there were still several pieces of material waiting for him to complete the subsequent process.
While making the first piece of material, he simultaneously prepared the preparation of several pieces of material.
After all, it was more than ten years before he prepared room-temperature superconducting materials by himself, and he could not guarantee that he would succeed in one go.
According to the process, the laboratory equipment is used to process the materials at different stages simultaneously. It is always a good idea to prepare a few more materials.
If everything goes well, he can get at least five pieces of 'copper oxide-based chromium-silver system room temperature superconducting material' this afternoon.
This quantity, even if it has not been used for more than ten years, should be able to guarantee that there will be at least one compliant product in it.
Now that the first piece of finished product is out, the rest is still waiting for him.
Therefore, the experimental testing of superconducting properties could only be left to other researchers who worked for him.
On the side, researcher Min Fu, who served as both deputy and tester, nodded and walked towards another laboratory with the prepared superconducting material.
In the past month, as a specialized superconducting tester, he has tested a variety of materials with no less than double digits.
Among them, most of the prepared superconducting materials can only achieve low-temperature superconductivity, and even if they can occasionally achieve high-temperature superconductivity in a liquid nitrogen environment, only a handful of them can.
Just when he was accustomed to thinking that the materials this time were not much different from usual ones, the data on the superconducting electromagnetic testing system surprised him for a moment.
Generally speaking, to verify whether a new material is a superconducting material, two conditions need to be verified.
The first is whether the material has zero resistance.
The second is whether the material is completely diamagnetic.
Such as resistance measurement.
The most basic superconducting property of superconducting materials is that resistance disappears in the superconducting state. By applying current to the superconducting material and measuring the resistance, it can be determined whether the material is in the superconducting state.
During this period, the external environment and conditions, such as temperature, pressure, etc., can be changed through the testing system to test the data of the material under different conditions, such as critical temperature, critical magnetic field, etc.
The first set of experiments conducted by Min Fu was naturally to test whether the material prepared by Xu Chuan had superconducting properties.
The critical temperature measurement experiment has been done. This time the temperature of the non-superconducting-superconducting phase transition of the material is 123.8K, which is minus 149.35 degrees Celsius.
If this value were put ten years ago, it would definitely be a very good data. It is already much lower than the cooling temperature of liquid nitrogen.
After all, research on high-temperature superconducting materials had just started at that time.
But now, it can only be said to be mediocre.
The critical temperature of high-temperature copper-carbon-silver composite superconducting materials is 152K, and the critical temperature is even better.
What stunned Min Fu was not the critical temperature, but another parameter.
Pressure test experimental data! As was his custom, after completing the critical temperature testing experiment, the next experiment he conducted was a pressure test.
For the current field of superconductivity, the pressure research and development of superconducting materials is not on the mainstream research and development route.
Regardless of the fact that pressure is a very important thermodynamic dimension, materials will exhibit novel structures and properties under high pressure, which has always attracted the attention of researchers in physics, materials and chemistry.
Materials such as metallic hydrogen, hydrogen-rich compounds, and carbon-sulfur compounds once achieved room-temperature superconductivity under high pressure.
But the pressures at which these materials achieve room-temperature superconductivity are terrifyingly high.
For example, in 2019, a German research team discovered that lanthanum decahydride can become superconducting above 250-260K, which is close to room temperature, at a pressure of 1.7-1.9 million atmospheres.
There is also carbonaceous hydrosulfide developed by the University of Rochester in the United States in 2020, which can also achieve room temperature superconductivity under high pressure.
But the intensity of this pressure is a full 2.6 million atmospheres.
Such harsh conditions can be said to make this material without any other practical value apart from its research value.
Even the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is only 1,100 atmospheres, and 260 Gpa is a full 2.6 million standard atmospheres, which is more than 2,000 times that at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Such exaggerated pressure has almost no practical value except in the laboratory.
Therefore, the academic and scientific research circles still focus more on temperature in the research and development of superconducting materials.
The reason is simple.
On the one hand, the difficulty of raising the critical temperature is much lower than that of lowering the critical pressure.
On the other hand, and more importantly, in terms of application, it is much easier to create a low-temperature environment than a high-pressure environment.
However, the test experimental data in front of him overturned Min Fu's understanding of superconducting materials based on the pressure system.
318.651kPa!
Under this data, the resistance curve that originally maintained nearly parallel to the X-axis directly bottomed out at an angle of nearly 90 degrees, as if jumping off a cliff.
Staring at the data on the computer screen, Min Fu swallowed dryly and rubbed his eyes vigorously.
He must have seen it wrong!
This is not 318.651kPa, but 318.651MPa!
No, that’s not right either, this must be 318651MPa!
This number should be normal!
After all, he had never heard of any research institute whose superconducting materials could superconduct at room temperature at a pressure of 3,000 atmospheres.
Even the most powerful room-temperature superconducting material in history, lanthanum decahydride, which is publicly recognized by academic circles, requires at least 1.7 million atmospheres to achieve zero resistance.
The right pressure is 300,000 MPa!
But soon, Min Fu fell into self-doubt.
The equipment in the laboratory. Can this superconducting electromagnetic testing system achieve a pressure of 300,000 MPa?
Can't do it!
Having done countless experiments, he knew very well that the maximum pressure that the superconducting electromagnetic testing equipment in the laboratory could produce was only 100,000 standard atmospheres.
Three hundred thousand MPa, which is almost three million standard atmospheres.
With this set of testing equipment in the laboratory, it is simply impossible to create such a high pressure.
Three million standard atmospheres, even in the entire world, there are only a few laboratories or research institutes that can create this level of pressure.
Because there are only a handful of countries that have mastered ultra-high pressure technology, any large scientific device that can produce ultra-high temperature, ultra-high pressure, and deviatoric stress is no exaggeration to say that it is a "big country's important weapon."
Staring at the small data marked on the Y-axis on the screen, Min Fu's breathing began to become heavier unconsciously.
318.651kPa!
He was really not wrong, this was only the intensity of three standard atmospheres!
"Fuck"
After repeating it again to confirm that he had read it correctly, a sentence of uncontrollable but simple shock came out of his mouth gently.
"At a pressure of 318.651kPa, does this material really transform into a superconducting state?"
"How is this possible?"
"."
After muttering a few words to himself, Min Fu suddenly realized something and suddenly recovered from the shock. As if he was crazy, he pulled the chair under his buttocks, stumbled and ran outside.
"Academician Xu Xu!"
Ignoring the knock on the door, Min Fu violently pushed open the door to the laboratory and barged in. He didn't even bother to take a breath and shouted with great effort.
“There is a major discovery!”
In the laboratory, Xu Chuan, who was wearing goggles, without looking back or making a sound, steadily sent the second superconducting substrate in his hand into the SC laser-guided plasma vapor deposition system before turning around. Come over.
Listening to Min Fu's excited voice and looking at his beaming expression, Xu Chuan also had a hint of excitement and expectation in his eyes. He probably knew what was going on.
"Superconducting materials, is there a breakthrough?"
After asking quickly, Xu Chuan's eyes fell on Min Fu, who was breathing heavily, waiting for him to tell the answer.
"More than a breakthrough! It's simply a miracle!"
Min Fu took a deep breath and said quickly: "I haven't finished the test experiment yet, but the resistance measurement and critical temperature test have been done."
"This new material will transform from a non-superconducting state to a superconducting state at 123.8K, which is minus 149.35 degrees Celsius."
"But that's not the point"
"What's the point?" Xu Chuan was almost speechless by Min Fu's way of reporting in the order of experiments. Can't you just say the point?
Min Fu didn't care about his details. He said excitedly with a red face: "318.651kPa!"
"When I conducted a pressure test on it, I found that this new material has zero resistance at standard room temperature of 25 degrees Celsius!"
"This is a miracle!"
“It’s incredible!”
"In an environment of three standard atmospheric pressures, there are materials that can be superconducting! This is a breakthrough in history."
Min Fu was still talking excitedly, but Xu Chuan already had a smile on his face.
This was exactly the answer he was expecting, but he didn't expect that the first piece of prepared material would meet the standards.
"Let's go, take me to see."