Replay 07: Opening the Temple of Learning

Chapter 307: Poaching!

Xia Guangming agreed without hesitation, saying that people would arrive soon and the list would be sent out immediately.

How did the list come up so quickly? Because Xia Guangming already had it.

Why? Because after the Jiangzhou New Materials Industry Research Institute stopped operating, the placement of employees became a big problem!
The men, young and old, were making a fuss because they had lost their wages.

This is a unit that receives government salaries, and suddenly they don't even have basic wages. It's really unacceptable.

However, the Xiaguo Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science were not willing to continue to support these people.

The investigation team found too many problems, enough to prove that the research institute really needs to be rectified.

Xia Guangming was just worried when Lu Shan said he wanted to poach some people. It was like someone giving him a pillow just when he was dozing off.

Let's see how Lu Shan does it and see how many he can recruit. If all goes well, people from other parts of the country can be sent to Lu Shan, and then those research institutes that have no scientific research capabilities but only receive money can be closed down.

Lu Shan was frowning as he read the information. As he read, he finally understood why the Jiangzhou New Materials Industry Research Institute could not produce any results.

The institute has a staff of 78 people, but there are 85 temporary workers outside the staff. The entire institute is packed with people.

What's even funnier is that even among the 78 full-time employees, 40 of them are non-research staff in logistics, finance, administration, etc., and the remaining 38 are in research positions.
Among these 38 scientific research positions, only 25 people are from relevant science, engineering, materials, chemistry, physics and other majors, and the rest are from other unrelated disciplines.

Let’s take a look at their academic qualifications. Among the 25 people, there are only 2 PhDs and 7 postgraduates, while the rest have bachelor’s degrees or below, and you can tell at a glance that some of them are just slacking off.

It is truly a miracle that this research institute in Jiangzhou can survive to this day.

Lu Shan is not a person who judges people by their academic qualifications, but people with low academic qualifications generally do have poor learning abilities.

If someone has special skills, Lu Shan is still willing to recruit him/her. It all depends on how the meeting goes.

When Liang Wenping received the call, he thought someone was playing a prank on him. Without thinking, he said, "Wrong number." Then he continued watching TV.

After the New Materials Industry Research Institute was shut down, everyone's life suddenly became strange. They didn't know what to do when they went to work. Liang Wenping occasionally went to clean up and then left.

He is one of the seven masters. Unlike ordinary masters, he is a practical talent who is responsible for changing ideas.

He really doesn't have a good grasp of the theory, but he has strong execution capabilities.

The calls continued to come, and Liang Wenping became a little angry. Are scammers so persistent these days?
"If you want to cheat, why don't you find someone else to cheat? Why do you have to cheat me?" Liang Wenping was very upset. His unit was shut down and he couldn't use his skills in Jiangzhou. His next step was to go to Nanyue Province to work like many people from Jiangyang Province.

Nanyue's salary is high, but he has a family, right? In the past, he worked for the research institute and did some private work, helping other companies in Jiangzhou to build production equipment, so that he could make ends meet. Now that he has lost the money from the research institute, doing private work alone seems unstable.

Liang Wenping has been trying to make up his mind for some time.

The person on the other end of the phone had a very calm tone. He said that he was from Zemeng Company and that they needed talent in this area and wanted him to come over to talk.

"Really?" Liang Wenping was skeptical.

"You won't suffer any harm by trying, and the journey isn't very far, so why not give yourself a chance?" The person on the other end of the phone remained calm.

"it is good!"

After Liang Wenping arrived there, he discovered that other people from the research institute were also there. He had thought it was a scam, but now it seems to be true.

When they arrived at the interview location, they found that there was only one young person interviewing them, and they were a little nervous. This company didn't look very reliable.

Suddenly, a colleague said in a lost voice: "That's... Lu Shan!"

The people present were immediately shocked. Lu Shan's name was well-known. Not to mention that Liu Hongming was arrested because of him, which led to the suspension of the research institute.

So everyone has complicated emotions towards Lu Shan, admiration but also some hatred.

But all the hatred soon disappeared because Lu Shan directly made the treatment into an advertising paper and posted it on the billboard on the side.

"The basic monthly salary is 12000 yuan, with five insurances and one housing fund calculated separately. The work hours are eight hours, with two days off a week and holidays as normal. Overtime pay will be paid according to the law if overtime is required..."

This treatment is unparalleled.

With such conditions, the people who came immediately became excited and, under the guidance of the Zemeng employees on site, went in for interviews one by one.

The result was good. Lu Shan kept these people. Although their abilities were not enough to support scientific research, they were able to understand the meaning and translate it into practical operations.

Theoretical training can be carried out later, and this group of people still has room for improvement.

Talents at the scientific research level should just wait and see the progress from the Academy of Sciences.

All the people who came to the interview had been selected by Lu Shan, and they had been investigated from their background, educational experience to specific business performance.

Take Liang Wenping for example. Fifteen years ago, his master's degree was more valuable than the two doctoral students in the research institute.

Such a person has been working for more than ten years and is still just an ordinary employee. It shows how "ignorant" he is.

Liang Wenping was dizzy when he returned. He was appointed by Lu Shan as the technical director, in charge of production equipment. His basic salary increased by 2,000 yuan compared to his colleagues, and his five insurances and one fund were also increased.

With such treatment, why would you want to go out to work in the future?

After returning, this group of people immediately submitted their resignations and started working at Lushan's factory.

Lu Shan also asked Liang Wenping to select people from the research institute again to see if there were any talents that were left behind. Liang Wenping was fair and actually brought a few more people over.

In this way, the core production and technical team of the graphene factory was initially established.

Lu Shan worked day and night to debug the equipment, and his progress quickly accelerated.

But it was a bit difficult for Xia Guangming to find people. Graphene was too high-end and too low-end. Many talents had studied it before, but had to change tracks when they didn't achieve results. Graphene needed to wait until the basic research was completed and the underlying industry was developed before there would be enough research talents.

Only a few countries in the world, such as the United States, have achieved a large scale and a relatively high level. Other countries are progressing very slowly in this field. The specific reasons have been mentioned before. The industry is small in scale, and there are not many places where it can be used at this stage. There are not many people who specialize in this.

So Xia Guangming had to look deeper and find people to ask if anyone had received relevant funding, or if anyone had submitted similar reports or papers, etc., which would take time.

Fortunately, the Academy of Sciences mobilized its own forces and found almost all the people who had studied this field in the past ten years. They selected and picked them, conducted interviews and reviews, and finally selected the people who would go.

The person sent this time is called Wang Leiming. He has been doing graphene research at a defense and military-related university for fifteen years. It can be said that he has experienced almost the entire development process of graphene.

Many of the people who originally researched this field have left to work on other more promising projects, or have been recruited by various companies to work as technical consultants. Only Wang Leiming is still working silently.

Lu Shan patted his head and suddenly remembered that this person had published several related papers more than ten years later, which had certain value. He didn't know what kind of sparks he would have with him in this life.

When I met with Wang Leiming, I asked about his progress while talking.

Wang Leimin advocates using a hydrothermal method to prepare composite materials in different proportions, using their electrochemical properties to form better impedance performance, which is more powerful than pure graphene oxide.

This material is MoO3-GO, which is molybdenum trioxide-graphene oxide composite material.

十几年后的研究结果为两者比例在2:1的时候电荷转移电阻最低，并在0.1A/g循环100圈后的库伦效率为95.5%，较其他比例样品的充放电性能更优秀。

Wang Leimin also has another suggestion, which is to use niobium pentoxide-graphene composite negative electrode material for research.

More than a decade later, the paper showed that the charge transfer resistance of the composite material was the lowest when the ratio was 1:40, and the charge capacity was 50, 480 mAh g-450 after 1 cycles at a low current density, and the coulombic efficiency was 93.75%.

Transition oxide (TMO) is one of the excellent choices to replace graphite for battery negative electrode materials. It will perform well when added to graphene. This is also the current idea, but the results are not very high yet.

None of this matters. Anyway, he has no intention of doing things completely according to Wang Leiming's approach. What Lu Shan needs is a knowledgeable theoretical expert to explain his theories in detail to technical backbones such as Liang Wenping.

That is, responsible for daily theoretical guidance and factory operations.

Given that Wang Leimin indeed lacked managerial ability, Lu Shan arranged for him to have an assistant so that everyone could perform their respective duties.

After getting rid of this burden, Lu Shan can focus more on theoretical breakthroughs. After the breakthroughs are made, he will hand them over to Wang Leiming to understand and explain them to Lu Wenping. Lu Wenping and others will debug the equipment, carry out actual production and train more lower-level technical backbones.

While Liang Wenping and his men were debugging the equipment, they were also recruiting soldiers according to Lu Shan's instructions.

Those of them who have skills all do some private work, and they know clearly who is capable and who is not.

Before, Liang Wenping was afraid that he had hired too many people, so he asked Lu Shan for his opinion. Lu Shan said that the more the better, but the quality had to be guaranteed.

Everyone finally felt relieved.

Inside the Singularity Laboratory, three heroes and Lu Shan were busy. Now they were determining the basic structure of the battery. Once it was determined, they would use this structure as a basis to fill it with various materials.

According to Lu Shan, the structure cannot be easily changed, otherwise how can production be carried out in the future?

Sometimes it is S-shaped, sometimes it is straight, and sometimes it is circular. Which one does the production line produce?

The structure is not easily determined. It needs to be determined based on the various characteristics of the graphene battery reaction, while also considering external materials.

This requires model calculation and deduction bit by bit.

The model that was finally determined is an internal mesh-shaped ring structure. Have you seen those colorful rolled-up lollipops? They have that kind of structure, because with this structure, the reaction surface is the largest.

A large reaction surface means it will be violent, so a safe distance must be determined. You can't just cram a bunch of things in and call it a day. At present, it is still relatively loose. In the future, when the material technology of the outer shell is improved, the space can be continuously compressed while still ensuring safety.

The preparation of graphene in the laboratory adopts the epitaxial growth method, that is, under ultra-high vacuum and high temperature conditions, graphene is epitaxially grown on a single crystal base through a gas phase reaction. This method produces high-quality graphene, but the cost is also high and the output is low, so it is only suitable for laboratory research.

When entering the pre-production stage, which is the stage where people like Liang Wenping are working, the preparation techniques must be changed.

After combining theory and practice and spending two months, the group finally determined the chemical vapor deposition method.

The carbon-containing compounds are still decomposed at high temperature, and the generated carbon atoms are deposited on the surface of metal or other substrates to form graphene. This method can produce large-area, high-quality graphene. At the same time, the number of graphene layers can be better controlled.

The cost of this method is indeed high and is only suitable for high-end use, so in the beginning, everyone advocated the use of redox method for preparation.

However, Lu Shan firmly opposed: "The redox method is low-cost, but the quality of graphene is very low. We need to improve the quality of graphene in the future, which will also cost money and take a lot of time. This invisible and uncontrollable cost is the biggest expense.

Moreover, chemical reagents are too harmful to the environment and human body, and the health of practitioners and local people will be seriously threatened."

Everyone thinks that there will definitely be some sacrifices in the early stages, and they can be changed slowly in the future. Otherwise, the operating pressure on the company will be too great. How much money will be spent in the early stages?

Seeing everyone's concerns, Lu Shan made a promise: "There will be a major breakthrough in theory soon. By then, we will be able to use this method to produce high-quality, low-cost graphene. Salaries will not be reduced, please rest assured!"

Now that the boss has said this, what else can his subordinates say?

Even if I don’t say it, I still have doubts in my heart - is it really possible?

The world's top scientific research institutions have been working on it for so many years, but I have never heard of anyone producing low-cost graphene through chemical vapor deposition. It is naturally impossible for that thing to be low-cost!
But in Lu Shan's view, chemical vapor deposition is the future.

Carbon-containing compounds are easy to find, right?
Easy! With such a wide range of sources, the raw materials are cheap to obtain, and then we only need to use specific methods to get the carbon out.

The difficulty lies in controlling the reaction environment and speed. Fortunately, the invention of topological semimetal semiconductor materials has given Lu Shan a lot of new ideas and transformed specific reaction equipment. This is much higher than the international level, breaking through the critical point of existing technology and entering the next stage.

Having solved the battery structure problem and the graphene preparation problem, all that remains is to start producing graphene batteries in the true sense.

On the contrary, Lu Shan was not so worried about this, because his previous research on new materials had given him a very deep understanding of the reaction laws of microscopic matter such as electrons, and coupled with the advanced nature of the model, he had a great grasp of the situation.

(End of this chapter)