Orion Crest, Series_1

Chapter 80: A gold mine

　　Stewart's class schedule, he'd already seen it. It was still in the middle of the summer holidays, though, and the nearest class was still next month, so he didn't have to worry about it for a while.

　　These days, Orion barely left his dorm room, racking his brain to design experiments with all that data in his computer.

　　In order to design the PDMS film, he had to study a large amount of literature and conceive experimental ideas based on it.

　　The reason that drove him to be so focused was, of course, the issue of money.

　　Watching over a huge gold mine, if he didn't get something down from it, he really couldn't even sleep.

　　As for describing this technology as a gold mine, it's not an exaggeration at all, and it even underestimates its value.

　　As early as 20 years ago, lithium metal as anode was abandoned by the industry, because of the short circuit caused by dendrite growth, so that the battery turned into firebombs, "blowing up" a listed company withs tens of billions of dollars market value.

　　But the strong market prospects for lithium metal, still attracting countless materials science laboratories, investing in this subject.

　　Enterprises like IBM, even equipped with a supercomputer for the lithium-air battery project, assigned to calculate the path of each gas molecule into the battery cell to avoid gas clogging problems ...... Although it was later found to be a bottomless pit, the project was mercilessly cut by the capitalists.

　　At the national level, for example, the energy minister in the Obama team, Mr Steven Chu, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in '97, was for some time a fervent supporter of lithium-negative batteries ...... although he was eventually persuaded by a group of people to stop.

　　As for why lithium batteries have such fascinating magic, we have to mention the concept of energy density.

　　The so-called energy density is the energy contained in a unit volume. As a measure of the performance of a battery is the most important indicator, to improve energy density has been the pursuit of the industry. And one of the most central red line is to raise the energy density of the power battery to 300-350Wh/kg.

　　At present, the lithium-sulfur batteries are still in the laboratory, the most likely to come out on top.

　　But if the lithium dendrite problem is solved, those hot concepts all have to step aside, lithium-negative batteries will be the winner.

　　Learned chemistry know, lithium metal negative electrode has the lowest electrochemical potential -3.04V, with a specific capacity as high as 3,861mAh/g.

　　With lithium material as anode, the energy storage effect can theoretically even reach ten times that of graphite batteries, defeating the energy density of graphite anode materials in all aspects!

　　And the most attractive point is that, once the lithium dendrite growth problem is solved, there is no need to even make great design changes to the existing battery, even if the existing universal graphite negative electrode material is directly replaced, the battery energy density can be improved significantly!

... ...

　　"You want to borrow the lab?"

　　On the phone, after hearing Orion's request, Professor Roger, who was analysing samples in the carbon nanomaterials lab, frowned suspiciously.

　　Holding the phone, Orion smiled and said, "Yes, I found something interesting while researching the literature, and would like to operate it once in the lab, and I may need to use the homogeniser and digital microscope."