Chapter 343: JACS!

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

A major event in the chemistry industry took place in July.

Well, two events.

Two important theses were published in the latest issue of JACS.

In particular, the “Cage-like carbon molecules and sulfur elemental composite cathode materials” thesis which was written by Stanley shocked both the materials science industry and the energy industry.

A month ago, after the patent number was received, the materials science laboratory of Binghamton University released a statement, and now the material science and industry finally saw the true content of the thesis.

Even though the academic community doubted if Professor Stanley really solved the problem regarding lithium-sulfur battery, they were generally optimistic.

After all, Professor Stanley was a big name in the lithium field, and he had ExxonMobil’s support, thus making his thesis very credible.

Many research inst.i.tutes were doing repeated experiments.

Maybe soon lithium-sulfur batteries would come out of laboratories and into people’s lives…

As for the other important thesis, it was the highly controversial “theoretical model of the electrochemical interface structure”.

Prior to this, the theoretical chemistry community did not have a theoretical model that could thoroughly clarify the microscopic essence of various electrochemical processes occurring on the “interface”.

If this model proved to be effective, it would help the entire chemistry community on electrochemical interface research.

However, this theory was too advanced.

Because of this, this thesis caused widespread controversy in the theoretical chemistry community.

It was no exaggeration to say that if it wasn’t because of the Crafoord Prize and the Adams Chemistry Prize, JACS would never have published this thesis so easily.

Although mathematics could be judged by its logical self-consistency, research outside of mathematics, especially for applied sciences, couldn’t be judged by its logical self-consistency.

The most difficult thing was that there were very few mathematicians that could understand the logical self-consistency in Lu Zhou’s mathematical model.

It wasn’t difficult to find a scholar both proficient in mathematics and in chemistry but to find a Crafoord level mathematician, that was much more difficult.

Although testing the model through experiments sounded like a good idea, it wasn’t.

After all, not every laboratory could afford supercomputers. Especially for calculations of molecular dynamics, the price wasn’t cheap.

The reason why “Anton” was so famous in the computational chemistry industry was that it had no worthy opponents.

However, due to Lu Zhou’s reputation in materials science and mathematics, many people were convinced that his theory was reliable.

Among them were scholars in theoretical chemistry and scholars in applied mathematics.

Rumors said that the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science in Germany had set up a task force that brought together several scholars in the fields of mathematics, chemistry, and condensed matter physics to test the model.

Maybe soon the answer would come out.

But for now, it seemed that the controversy would stay.

Lu Zhou, who was at the center of all of this, was surprisingly calm. He did his experiment without hesitation.

Three days after the JACS publication, his second experiment with the D.E Shaw Research Inst.i.tute came to an end. He had finally completed the research on the molecular dynamics simulation of the interface between carbon-sulfur materials and organic electrolytic solutions.

After sending these millions of dollars worth of experiment data to Yang Xu, who was far away at the Jinling Inst.i.tute of Computational Materials, Lu Zhou was about to turn off his computer. Suddenly, he received a video call from Sarrot.

Lu Zhou knew what the professor wanted and picked up the call.

As expected, Sarrot had an awkward expression.

He stayed silent for a while before he said, “I’m sorry… for letting you down.”

Lu Zhou didn’t blame him.

“It’s fine, you don’t have to feel guilty. You did what I asked you to do.”

Scientific research wasn’t gardening; just because one planted seed doesn’t mean results would come out.

Professor Stanley was the director of the Inst.i.tute of Materials at Binghamton University; Sarrot was no match for someone like him.

Not to mention Stanley’s financial support, it would be a miracle if Sarrot had won the compet.i.tion.

However, just like Lu Zhou had guessed, it didn’t matter who developed the technology.

Sarrot was confused. He then looked at Lu Zhou and said, “I don’t understand, why do you look like you don’t care? This is the lithium-sulfur battery project, you must have invested a lot of money into this?”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Of course, I spent a lot of money on your lithium-sulfur batteries, and your experiment on HCS-1 was inspiring. But when did I say the key to solving lithium-sulfur batteries was the caged carbon molecule?”

Sarrot was stunned.

Lu Zhou told him to do everything he could to solve the laboratory synthesis method of the caged carbon molecule, and the HCS-1 was only a by-product of the caged carbon molecule.

But Lu Zhou never said the caged carbon molecule was the key to solving the lithium-sulfur battery shuttle effect…

He suddenly realized this.

His eyes widened. “Wait a minute, you’re saying…”

“The caged carbon molecule is a very interesting material whether it is from the perspective of its geometry or its physical chemical properties. However, it has nothing to do with lithium-sulfur batteries.” Lu Zhou threw a sugar cube into his coffee and said, “As for its use, I will tell you later.”

Sarrot gulped and said, “Which means the JACS thesis that Professor Stanley had published…”

“They’re probably running around like lobsters in a pot,” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “but it’s their fault.”

Similar things happened before.

Professor Stanley’s thesis could be interpreted as an academic mistake.

Lu Zhou guessed that in order to win the compet.i.tion, Stanley probably “modified” some data in order to publish sooner.

For example, according to the mathematical model he established for “the effect of pore size and surface area of hollow carbon spheres on the diffusion of polysulfide compounds”, the caged carbon molecule had a lesser effect on the “shuttle effect”. This was confirmed in Professor Stanley’s experiment.

The so-called lesser effect meant a tiny effect.

Its actual industry application value wasn’t even comparable to Lu Zhou’s HCS-1…

Sarrot was speechless.

What is a genius?

This is a genius…

Stanley thought he had the upper hand. Instead, he was baited…

From Sarrot’s perspective, Lu Zhou had planned this whole thing.

Including Ricardo stealing the data… It was all part of Lu Zhou’s scheme.

Sarrot would still be in the dark if Lu Zhou hadn’t explained this to him.

However, Sarrot didn’t know that the reality was much more simple.

Even if Lu Zhou explained the high tech system missions to him, he wouldn’t believe in it…

“Oh yeah, about the Ricardo lawsuit, just withdraw it.” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “He’s helped us so much, we’ll let him go.”

Their most compet.i.tive opponents were destroyed; this reduced a lot of pressure on the Jinling Inst.i.tute of Computational Materials.

Lu Zhou couldn’t be bothered to go through with a lawsuit.

Lu Zhou originally thought that Sarrot wouldn’t be happy to drop the lawsuit. He didn’t expect Sarrot to look at him with admiration.

“Okay, boss!”

Sarrot couldn’t help but say, “Smart, your scheme was wonderful…”

Lu Zhou: …?

What scheme?

What is he talking about?

I’m so confused.

Lu Zhou felt like Sarrot had misunderstood something.