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Chapter 112 One Million Times

After the meeting, the three went their separate ways.

Lu Jing plunged into the laboratory and personally set up the reaction device, Chen Zhiyi adjusted the process parameters of the coating equipment in the clean room, and Luo Xiangdong arranged the work schedule for the next three weeks.

The entire Z-7 experimental building once again entered a state of high-speed operation.

As time went by, Lu Jing's molecular synthesis became more difficult than expected. In the designed seven-step reaction route, the yield of the third step, the UIImann coupling reaction, remained low.

The first batch only had an 11% yield, and the purified product wasn't even enough to make a single microcavity sample.

He repeatedly tried to optimize the reaction conditions, changing the solvent from DMF to NMP and then to DMSO, the catalyst from cuprous iodide to cuprous bromide and then to acetic acid, and adjusting the temperature from 110 degrees to 130 degrees and then back to 120 degrees.

Lin Chuan provided information on quantum battery technology, which was comparable to an open-book exam, but engineering replication was not so easy.

Moreover, Lin Chuan himself didn't personally push things forward on the front lines of the project team much; he delegated the work to his subordinates.

Lu Jing and his team are outstanding, all top talents, but they still have a considerable gap compared to Lin Chuan.

As the head of DeepBlue Technology, Lin Chuan couldn't stay in one project team forever.

Especially as the technology in the Hyperdimensional Library is gradually unlocked, if he has to personally participate in every project, ten Lin Chuans wouldn't be enough.

Lin Chuan left the task to his subordinates to carry out, while he focused on maintaining the overall direction. As long as things went smoothly, it wouldn't be a big problem if things were a little slow.

Lin Chuan would only personally solve problems if his subordinates encountered difficulties they couldn't overcome.

After nine days of hard work, Lu Jing finally achieved a stable yield of 61% for the "coupling" step, which was an acceptable level.

After obtaining a sufficient quantity of product, he immediately pushed forward the next four steps of the reaction, and finally obtained the first batch of finished products in mid-month.

Total weight: 3.7 grams, a deep purple crystalline powder.

It emits a bright orange-red fluorescence under ultraviolet light, and Lu Jing gave it the code name: QB-101.

At the same time, Chen Zhiyi also made a breakthrough in microcavity technology.

Lu Jing stood in front of the laser's control panel.

Power electronics engineers Zhang Miao and Zhao Yiming were also present. They connected their homemade discharge circuit board to the electrodes on both sides of the microcavity sample. The oscilloscope probe was already clamped, and a horizontal baseline was displayed on the screen.

"Sample in place."

"Laser preheating complete, pulse energy set at 1.2 millijoules."

"Discharge circuit check complete. Connect a 100-ohm resistor to the load."

Finally, Luo Xiangdong decisively ordered: "Begin the first charge-discharge closed-loop test."

Lu Jing pressed the trigger button.

The femtosecond laser pulse struck the surface of the microcavity sample at a speed of one quadrillionth of a second.

Through the ultrathin silver film at the top, photons excited quantum coherent states in the organic molecular array.

At the same time, the light field inside the microcavity is redistributed, and the quantum entangled states between molecules form a new collective mode under the modulation of the optical microcavity.

This model was derived by Lu Jing from data when designing new molecules. It can lock the excited state energy in a more stable quantum phase, thereby significantly slowing down the rate of decoherence.

On the oscilloscope, a vertical spike signal flashed by.

Then, under everyone's gaze, the baseline briefly jerked.

"Signal available!"

Zhang Miao shouted and pointed at the screen.

Luo Xiangdong immediately leaned closer to look, and after the spike signal, an extremely brief voltage pulse appeared on the baseline.

The duration is only about 10 nanoseconds, and the peak voltage is less than 0.3 volts.

The pulse was so weak it was almost like instrument noise, but its waveform could be clearly seen when amplified.

It is a rapid rising edge, followed by an exponentially decaying tail.

This indicates that the quantum coherent state in the microcavity successfully released a small portion of its energy to the external load before decohering.

The current was indeed extracted.

Luo Xiangdong said in a deep voice, "Let's do it again."

Immediately afterwards, Lu Jing reactivated the laser.

The same spikes, the same pulses—this time, the waveform on the oscilloscope was exactly the same as the first time.

The repeatability has been confirmed.

"Ten nanoseconds," Luo Xiangdong said. "The energy storage time is [a fraction of] the charging time—"

"One million times." Lu Jing finished speaking for him, and then said, "The charging time is 100 femtoseconds, and the energy storage time is 10 nanoseconds. The difference between the two is six orders of magnitude."

When the project team was doing principle verification before, this ratio was less than 1.

Immediately afterwards, cheers erupted in the laboratory, and everyone present was thrilled.

Everyone knows that those 10 nanoseconds just now meant that humanity had completed a truly meaningful quantum battery charging and discharging closed loop for the first time.

From the moment a femtosecond laser pulse strikes the sample, to the formation of a quantum coherent state, and then to the output of energy as an electric current to an external load.

The entire cycle was broken for the first time.

Finally, Luo Xiangdong was the first to calm down. He looked around at everyone present and said, "10 nanoseconds is certainly not enough, far from enough."

Undeterred, Lu Jing immediately said, "But this proves that we are on the right track; the new molecules and the new microcavity structure are indeed effective."

Luo Xiangdong nodded: "Good. The next step is clear: continue optimizing the molecular design and improving the lifetime of the quantum coherent state. There's still a nine-order-of-magnitude gap between 10 nanoseconds and 10 seconds. If we improve by an order of magnitude every three weeks, we still need—"

"Stop calculating, it's not that slow." Lu Jing interrupted him. "Give me three days to analyze today's data, and then come up with the design plan for the next round of molecules."

In the days that followed, the quantum energy storage project team entered a highly compressed iteration cycle.

In his in-depth analysis of the first round of test data, Lu Jing discovered a crucial clue.

Although the excited-state lifetime of the QB-101 molecule has been increased by orders of magnitude at room temperature, a major decoherence pathway still exists.

The low-frequency vibrations of the flexible methylene chain segments in the molecular backbone periodically perturb the exciton coupling strength, directly leading to irreversible dephase in the quantum phase state.

This loss mechanism manifests as a set of vibrational fingerprints at specific frequencies in the spectral data. By comparing the calculated spectrum with the experimental spectrum, Lu Jing finally identified the rocking vibration mode of the methylene group.

His solution was proposed by Lin Chuan after he had discussed it with him.

The scheme is quite bold, replacing all four flexible methylene segments on the periphery of the molecule with rigid phenylene units, and then introducing tert-butyl groups at the para position of the benzene ring as steric hindrance groups.

The essence of this modification is to freeze low-frequency vibrational modes by increasing the rigidity of the molecular skeleton.

At the same time, the spacing between adjacent molecules is strictly locked at the optimal coupling distance of the quantum coherent state by using sterically hindered groups.

The new molecule was designated QB-102.

Lu Jing completed the modification of the molecular structure and the replanning of the synthetic route within three days, reducing the reaction steps from seven to five.

Because a more rigid skeleton simplifies the protection strategies for certain intermediate components.

He produced the first batch of 6.8-gram samples in a week, nearly doubling the efficiency of the previous round.

Meanwhile, Luo Xiangdong also further optimized the experimental design.

He noticed that the energy utilization rate of single-pulse pumping was too low. Most of the photon energy was not actually converted into the storage energy of the quantum coherent state, but was dissipated directly in the form of thermal radiation during the pumping process.

The overall energy conversion efficiency is only slightly over 1%, which not only restricts the energy efficiency of the battery, but also causes the measurement accuracy of energy storage time to be affected by the signal-to-noise ratio.

He consulted the description of "coherent pumping" in the technical materials provided by Lin Chuan, and combined it with Lu Jing's calculation results of molecular energy level structure to design a set of dual-pulse pumping sequences.

The first pulse is responsible for exciting the molecule from the ground state to the first excited state. The second pulse, after precise time delay and phase modulation, drives the molecular system into the target quantum coherent state.

This requires the femtosecond laser system to have extremely high time accuracy. Lu Jing specially upgraded the control software of the pump-probe delay line to control the pulse time jitter within 5 femtoseconds.

In July, the second round of charge and discharge tests began.

After switching to QB-102 molecules and a dual-pulse pump scheme, the energy storage time jumped from 10 nanoseconds to 3 seconds.

This is a leap of nine orders of magnitude.

In the lab, Zhang Miao was the first to shout out upon seeing the result, and couldn't help but punch the optical platform.

Chen Zhiyi glared at him fiercely: "The optical platform cannot be smashed; any tiny vibration could affect the optical path."

Zhang Miao scratched his head: "Uh, sorry, sorry, I got a little too excited."

three seconds.

This figure means that the energy storage time of quantum batteries has exceeded the charging time by 13 orders of magnitude.

Although it is still a long way from Lin Chuan's target of 30 minutes of energy storage time, the physical barriers have been completely overcome, which is a significant step.

The remaining task is to use engineering methods to further increase this number.

July 16, DeepBlue Technology's new headquarters.

Shen Yuxin, carrying a stack of documents, arrived at Lin Chuan's office door and knocked a few times.

"Come in."

At this moment, Lin Chuan was sitting in his office chair, holding a new round of test plans that the quantum energy storage project team had just submitted.

"Senior, people from several environmental protection companies, including the European Green Source Environmental Protection Group, are here again, along with some from the United States." Shen Yuxin placed the top document on her desk.

She added, "This time I brought a formal business letter."

Lin Chuan picked up the business letter, glanced at it, and a knowing smile appeared on his lips.

Several names, such as Green Source Environmental Group, are quite familiar because Europeans came to talk about it about two years ago, but the talks ended badly.

Since January 1, 2013, a year and a half ago, China has officially implemented a ban on imported waste, comprehensively prohibiting the import of 24 categories of solid waste, including household waste plastics, unsorted waste paper, and waste textiles.

This ban has been in effect for a year and a half now, forcing developed countries in Europe and America to adjust their waste management systems.

Before 2013, most of the waste plastics generated in Europe and the United States were shipped to China.

Their processing costs in their home country often reach four or five hundred US dollars per ton, and in some areas even as high as 1000 US dollars.

But exporting packaged waste to the Third World costs no more than $80 per ton, including shipping.

Without a doubt, the waste is being transferred to developing countries and regions in the Third World, and China has become the largest importer of foreign waste.

Europeans and Americans pack up their garbage, ship it across the ocean to China, and then they don't have to worry about it anymore. For them, this is an extremely cheap way to dispose of garbage.

Then they claim to be very environmentally conscious, and then turn around and accuse you of being unenvironmentally conscious.

However, with the implementation of the ban on imported waste, this model was completely ended.

Shortly after the ban was implemented, waste plastics generated in Europe and the United States began to accumulate rapidly.

In 2013, European and American countries shifted their waste export destinations to Southeast Asia and South Asia, including Turkey, which also began accepting waste.

Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia have received large amounts of waste plastic that were originally destined for China.

Bangladesh and India also received a share.

But this road was soon blocked.

Because these countries have limited industrial processing capacity, coupled with increasing environmental pressure, they couldn't withstand it for even a year.

Vietnam was the first to introduce restrictions in August 2013, followed by Malaysia, and Thailand also began to tighten approvals, closing one window after another.

At this point, environmentally conscious Europeans and Americans had no choice but to increase the proportion of waste incineration, in addition to the simplest and most brutal method of landfilling.

While Europeans and Americans have relatively mature technology for waste incineration.

However, it is not environmentally friendly. Burning garbage emits toxic gases, and the cycle for building a new incineration plant is often five to eight years, which is considered extremely fast even in Europe and America.

The problem is that capital is also calculating the risks involved.

DeepBlue Technology's "Plastic-Eating Bacteria" solution is readily available in China, and there were also reports a few years ago about "Osaka Sakai bacteria" that could also eat plastic.

Those companies have to do the math: what if they expand their incineration plants and just as they're finished, someone else turns around and partners with DeepBlue Technology? Or what if "Osaka Sakai bacteria" actually works? Wouldn't their operation of building incineration plants make them look like clowns?

The potential risks are too great, so many local businesses are unwilling to take the risk of building new distilleries.

If directly landfilled, it will not decompose for hundreds of years.

Moreover, whether it's incineration or landfill, environmental impact assessments and public opposition are huge obstacles. Environmental organizations in Europe and America are all against it, and it has directly encountered a wave of backlash.

The result is an ever-increasing amount of garbage, which cannot be processed in time, leading to either high processing costs.