NABC No materials for Chapter 55? Then make one.
No materials for Chapter 55? Then make one.
No materials? Then make one.
Lin Yu hung up the phone and threw it on the table.
"The German team has been poached."
He said to Xia Zijin.
Xia Zijing's fingers stopped on the keyboard, and she looked up at him.
"The whole team?"
"Samples and data, all packed up and moved."
When Lin Yu said this, his tone was no different from when he had asked Tencent to hand over 5 billion. It was as if losing a 2 billion yuan material supply chain and losing a ballpoint pen were in the same quadrant in his emotional coordinate system.
In the main control center, Li Jianbin had just signed the personnel contract for Singularity Algorithm, and the ink was still wet when he heard the news.
His first reaction was not gloating.
Rather, it is a professional instinct of vigilance.
"Without a topological insulating film, your energy recovery architecture is just a castle in the air."
Li Jianbin approached, his tone no longer as fiery as before, but rather a purely technical assessment: "The growth process for this material is extremely demanding. There are no more than three laboratories worldwide capable of achieving a thickness of less than 5 nanometers, and they are all in the West. Now we've lost both the personnel and the data. What are we going to do?"
This is a fatal problem.
No matter how ingenious Lin Yu's design is, without the materials, it's like having the blueprints for an engine but not being able to buy steel.
The senior researchers behind Li Jianbin exchanged glances. They weren't laughing at him; as contracted employees of Singularity, if this ship sank, they'd be left behind.
What are the core requirements of your energy recovery model?
Lin Yu did not answer Li Jianbin, but turned to ask Xia Zijin instead.
"The thermal conductivity is greater than 4000 W/m·K, the Curie temperature is precisely controlled at 85.3 degrees Celsius, and the film thickness is within 5 nanometers."
Xia Zijing blurted out the data, accurate to one decimal place, as if these parameters were ingrained in her cerebral cortex.
Is bismuth telluride the only option?
Xia Zijing paused for 0.3 seconds. In her reaction system, this was already considered a long period of thought.
"It's not the only one. But for other materials to achieve the same performance, they need to be redesigned at the molecular level. It's like inventing something that doesn't exist in nature from scratch."
"Then invent one."
Lin Yu stood up and walked to the whiteboard.
Li Jianbin almost choked on his own tea.
"What did you say?"
"Invent a new material."
Lin Yu picked up a marker and wrote on the whiteboard a molecular structure he had never seen in any paper before: "An alternative to bismuth telluride. Higher thermal conductivity, simpler growth process, and—"
He drew an arrow next to the molecular formula, pointing to another string of symbols.
"All raw materials can be obtained domestically."
There was silence for five seconds in front of the whiteboard.
Li Jianbin pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and stepped forward. He stared at the molecular formula for a full minute, his expression shifting from confusion to shock, and then from shock to a complex emotion he himself couldn't define.
"This is... a derivative of indium antimonide?"
His voice was a little hoarse. "You added the rare earth element zirconia to the base?"
"Three-layer heterogeneous structure".
Xia Zijing was already calculating rapidly on her laptop: "The bottom layer of indium antimonide provides electron mobility, the middle layer of cerium iron alloy controls the Curie temperature, and the top layer of graphene encapsulates and conducts heat..."
Her fingers suddenly stopped.
She looked up at Lin Yu, and for the first time, a flicker of emotion appeared in her eyes that she herself had not noticed.
"The theoretical value of thermal conductivity can reach 5200."
5200.
It is 30% higher than bismuth telluride.
Moreover, the raw materials—antimony, indium, thiocyanate, and graphene—are all strategic resources that China has abundant reserves of.
"When did you come up with that idea?"
Li Jianbin's voice was almost squeezed out of his chest.
"Just now."
"Just now?"
"From the time Shen Yue told me that the German team had been poached until now, it's been about four minutes."
Lin Yu tossed aside the marker and returned to his chair. "Four minutes is enough for me to deduce three solutions; this is the optimal one."
Li Jianbin stood still.
He is 61 years old this year. He has been immersed in the field of semiconductor materials for 38 years since he published his first paper at Bell Labs at the age of 23.
Thirty-eight years of accumulation allowed him to understand its feasibility the moment he saw the molecular formula.
In that same instant, he realized that the gap between himself and the boy in front of him was not a river, but an ocean.
He returned to his workstation, sat down, and opened his laptop.
"You guys."
He said to the researchers behind him, his voice hoarse but steady, "Don't just stand there. Run all the thermodynamic parameters for this molecular formula. I need to see the complete phase diagram."
Nobody asked why.
Li Jianbin's tone had changed. It was no longer the bitterness of being forced to carry out orders, but the instinctive excitement of a veteran smelling blood.
Who cares if he's working for a kid?
If this material can actually be made, it will be a milestone in the history of China's semiconductor industry.
He didn't want to miss out.
Life at the Loongson base is far less exciting than outsiders imagine.
At least in Lin Yu's view, it was no different from going to university.
He would sleep until he naturally woke up, go to the cafeteria to eat a bowl of egg noodles for 3.5 yuan, then wander to the sofa in the control center, lie down, close his eyes and think for a while, and then dictate what he had thought of to Xia Zijin.
Xia Zijin was responsible for turning what was in his mind into a model.
Wang Lei was responsible for turning the model into code.
Li Jianbin was responsible for leading the team to turn the code into a working engineering solution.
With a clear division of labor, the efficiency is extremely high.
The only thing that bothered Lin Yu was that the egg noodles in the base canteen didn't have chili peppers.
"Mr. Chen, could you perhaps improve the meals?"
This was the only formal request Lin Yu made to the head of the nation's top scientific research institution on his third day at the base.
Chen Jiefang remained silent for a long time before finally ordering the logistics department to urgently purchase twenty boxes of Lao Gan Die chili peppers.
Half a month passed uneventfully like this.
Li Jianbin's team was fully engaged. On the day the eight million yuan annual salary contract was finally deposited into their bank accounts, even the last few senior researchers who had been putting on airs completely let go of their psychological burdens.
Money has such a simple yet persuasive power.
The molecular formula of the new material invented by Lin Yu was verified by Li Jianbin's team over fifteen days, and all the thermodynamic parameters met the standards.
The theory is feasible.
The rest is about turning it from paper into a physical object.
This job can't be rushed, and Lin Yu isn't in a hurry either.
He handed over the specific material production process to Li Jianbin, and then went back to Jinghua University to catch up on three days of classes.
To be precise, I caught up on three days of sleep.
In a physics class, the professor was lecturing on the basics of electromagnetism. Lin Yu, sitting in the last row, was fast asleep, his drool practically soaking the textbook.