After following the leader of the laboratory through the entire Photovoltaic Materials Research Institute, we finally came to the highlight of this time, which was photovoltaic ceramic materials. This is what Zhao Yi came here for.
When they came to the photovoltaic ceramics project team, the person in charge of the project team took out a ceramic tile with an area of about one square meter, which was very common in the previous life, and showed it to Zhao Yi.
Zhao Yi took the tile he brought over and looked at it carefully. The surface of the tile was covered with a layer of gray glaze. It didn't look anything special, it was very smooth.
Then he touched it with his hand and found that there was no cold feeling like common ceramic glazes. This showed that its heat absorption capacity was very good and it could hold more heat, and the heat was not easily dissipated.
Apart from that, Zhao Yi couldn't see anything special. Then he looked at the edge of the tiles and found that there were many yellow dots in the middle. Although he didn't know what their purpose was, they were definitely very important.
As for the back of floor tiles, it is a very common back of ceramic tiles, which is very rough. This design is mainly used to fully mix with cement, sand and ash to achieve greater adhesion.
"Tell me the principle. I'm very curious. This kind of ordinary ceramic can be as magical as you said." Zhao Yi asked the person in charge.
"Actually, the principle is not that complicated. There are only two main components. The first part is the special photovoltaic glaze, which has very high photosensitivity.
As long as there is a photon impact, holes will be generated at the impact site, and electrons will be displaced to form a voltage. The formation process is not much different from that of silicon crystal photovoltaic materials.
It's just that this special ceramic glaze is more sensitive to light capture, which is why their light energy conversion efficiency is so high.
The second is the small yellow dot on the side, which is an external interface made of copper. It is mainly used to connect photovoltaic ceramics, so that when spliced together, a larger photovoltaic ceramic panel will be formed. the person in charge said.
When Zhao heard what he said, he frowned, thought for a moment and said, "This special ceramic glaze is actually a kind of coating. So is it possible that this coating material alone can generate photovoltaic voltage without being attached to ceramics?" ?”
"We have tried this. If it is not fired at high temperature, it will not show such a high photovoltaic voltage sensitivity, and the effect achieved will be very limited." The person in charge replied.
The reason why Zhao Yi asked this is because if this kind of ceramic product is used for exterior wall decoration, it will be very difficult, because cement must be used to paste the wall, and cement sealing is required in the middle, so the tiles will be completely separated. Block.
If cement sealing is not carried out and the ceramic tiles are in direct contact with each other, not to mention the problems caused by thermal expansion and contraction, the safety will be greatly reduced, and the construction will be very difficult.
Moreover, Zhao Yi is not satisfied with the materials they use to connect photovoltaic ceramics. Whether copper or graphene nanotubes are used, the production cost is very high and is not suitable for large-scale application scenarios.
If it is sold to other companies, it is better. After all, other companies will pay the bill, but the biggest user of these products is themselves, so saving every bit of cost is something that needs to be considered.
"Have you studied the specific structure of this glaze after firing, and then used other methods to change the intermediate change process to directly achieve the final structural goal." Zhao Yi asked again.
"Of course we have studied this, but we have not yet figured out how to use other methods to replace the ceramic firing process. Otherwise, we can directly make coatings based on the final product structure.
This not only makes the production method easier, but also simpler to use. However, we have made many attempts in this area and all ended in failure. "said the person in charge.
To be honest, the performance of this kind of photovoltaic ceramics is actually very good. It can completely replace the existing photovoltaic silicon crystal materials and be used in the construction of large-scale photovoltaic power plants.
However, there are still many problems when applied to buildings, which have been mentioned above, so Zhao Yi is still not satisfied with this model of building materials.
Fortunately, the project leader is also aware of this problem and has made attempts in this regard, but they have all failed. If there are no attempts, it means that the person in charge is somewhat lacking in acumen for scene application.
It seems that if you want to solve this problem, you need to personally participate in it. Using the structure of this ceramic glaze as a sample, you can develop a special coating product, or a paint product.
Photovoltaic materials are actually very simple in the final analysis. They only need to capture photons and generate an electrical displacement. This creates a voltage and forms a weak current. These currents are then guided and stored to become electrical energy.
As long as it meets the above description, it can be regarded as a photovoltaic material, and what Zhao Yi wants to make is a coating product that can meet the above description.
In this case, it is only necessary to apply this kind of paint on the taller exterior walls of the building, and then use wires at the edges to collect and store the electricity generated by these paints.
Thinking of this, Zhao Yiyi said to Wen Sheng: "It looks like I'm going to stay here for a while. You don't have to accompany me anymore. Just go back and book a room nearby for me to rest."
When Wen Sheng heard Zhao Yi's words, he was both happy and a little disappointed. He was happy because the boss finally took action, so the photovoltaic coating he described would definitely be successfully developed. Wen Sheng had a bit of a blind worship of Zhao Yi's material technology.
What's disappointing is that this was originally a material worthy of special mention, but the result was not satisfied with the boss. Although it did not affect the operation of Cornerstone Materials Company, let alone his position, this performance opportunity was no longer available to the boss. It's unpleasant.
"Okay, I'll go back and make the arrangements right away. When the arrangements are made, I will tell your secretary." Wen Sheng promised.
Later, Zhao Yi temporarily joined the project team to conduct an in-depth analysis of this photovoltaic ceramic glaze. Only after a thorough analysis of the structure and principle of this ceramic glaze can the next step be taken.
Fortunately, the project team has done a very solid job in these basic tasks. Zhao only needs to call out these experimental data and simulate them through simulation software to see clearly.
After understanding the specific structure of this material and the reason for its high photoelectric conversion rate, Zhao Yi began to use his knowledge of computational materials science to redesign a material target.
After he redesigned a material, he then put it into the intelligent material analysis and calculation simulation system for simulation calculations. The results showed better results than the project team's original ceramic glaze.
According to simulation results, the coating material designed by Zhao Yi not only increases the photoelectric conversion efficiency to 60%, but also shows outstanding durability and stability.
Due to the use of special building strains and special paints, the service life of Chinese housing companies can be very long. If the paint used on the exterior walls of buildings is not durable or unstable, it will be a very bad thing.
When the materials designed by Zhao Yi were simulated, all the members of the project team were full of admiration for Zhao Yi. Before, it was just a rumor, but now this legend really stood in front of him, and he had just completed a project. feat.
However, Zhao Yi did not feel excited about this. After all, this was just the first step in a long march of thousands of miles. It only showed that materials with this design structure could show this ideal effect.
But how to produce and prepare this material is a very critical step. If it cannot be manufactured, then it will be useless no matter how excellent the material is.
So the next step is to reversely deduce this material. However, the intelligent material analysis and calculation simulation system has such a function, but this function cannot guarantee that the inferred process will be 100% correct.
Therefore, the next task was handed over to the researchers of these project teams. Zhao Yi did not intend to do this kind of physical work by himself.
After handing over these physical tasks to the project team members, Zhao Yi began to think about the issue of energy storage. Nowadays, basically all the products that can store energy are battery products.
The reason why he considered this issue was that he needed a device with very large energy storage to store the electric energy emitted by the photovoltaic coating. Otherwise, the electricity generated during the day would be wasted.
Under normal circumstances, residents rarely use electricity in their homes during the day, and this is the best time for photovoltaic power generation. When electricity consumption peaks at night, the photovoltaic power generation time is the worst.
To solve this mismatch between demand and production, we need to use energy storage equipment. However, the cost of battery products will be very high, not to mention the issue of energy storage density.
Therefore, Zhao Yi feels that using traditional battery products for energy storage is not a good idea. Even if he has the ability to develop a battery with a very high energy storage density, the cost will be very high.
Moreover, the electric energy they store is for daily use of residents, not for use in electronic products, which requires a very large discharge capacity. Otherwise, it will not be able to run residents' electrical appliances at all.
Then capacitive energy storage entered his field of vision, but compared to traditional capacitive energy storage, he prefers supercapacitive energy storage equipment based on graphene materials.
In fact, the principle of this kind of graphene supercapacitor is not complicated. It uses the good conductivity of graphene to charge and discharge hundreds of times faster than conventional batteries.
At the same time, the single-layer atomic structure of graphene can be used to greatly increase the surface area, so that more electrical energy can be stored and high energy density can be achieved.
So the principle is not difficult. What is rare is how to quickly and stably produce graphene materials that meet the needs. As long as there is a breakthrough in this aspect, other tasks can be left to the following researchers.
Moreover, this kind of graphene supercapacitor has a very wide range of applications. It not only meets the energy storage needs of matching photovoltaic coatings, but can also solve the problem of off-peak power regulation of the national grid.
More importantly, batteries made using this kind of graphene supercapacitor can be used in a wide range of applications, ranging from electronic products to large cars.
It's just that Zhao Yi didn't have much demand for graphene capacitors before, because the current oil is still quite cheap, so he has no plans to directly launch an electric vehicle project. As for other energy storage needs, other methods can be used.
The simplest graphene supercapacitor uses a double-layer capacitor structure. The specific principle is to insert two electrodes into the electrolyte and apply a voltage between them that is less than the decomposition voltage of the electrolyte solution.
At this time, the positive and negative ions in the electrolyte will quickly move toward the two poles under the action of the electric field, and form a tight charge layer on the surface of the two upper electrodes, that is, an electric double layer.
Therefore, if you want to obtain a graphene capacitor with high energy density, you need not only graphene material, but also a very good electrolyte material.
So in response to these two problems, Zhao Yi began to conduct related research work. The first thing to solve was the large-scale preparation of graphene. If this problem is not solved, the cost of graphene will be very high.
Zhao Yi didn't bother to think about other methods, so he still used the microbial preparation method that Cornerstone Materials Company is best at. This preparation method can be prepared in large quantities and does not require special mechanical processing capabilities.
Zhao Yi plans to cultivate a microorganism with an adaptive single layer. In this case, it can ensure that the graphene material generated by this microorganism has a single-layer structure.
At the same time, this microorganism also needs to have a very good affinity for carbon atoms. At the same time, in terms of the characteristics of organisms, a certain connection can be formed between the two microorganisms.
Once they get very close, they will spit out the carbon atoms they transported, and then form stable bonds with the carbon atoms spit out by nearby microorganisms.
In the next time, Zhao Yi will cultivate this kind of microorganism in the laboratory. If he uses the method that Zhao Yi gave to Cornerstone Materials Company, it will take too long.
Zhao Yi's visit this time was just a temporary move, and he couldn't stay for too long, so he simply used Zhou Ling's help to directly come up with a microbial cultivation plan that met the conditions.
Then there is the experimental verification of this microbial cultivation plan. Zhao Yi just asks the researchers to follow the data flow for this operation.
After arranging this, Zhao Yi began to study electrolytes again. To obtain ultra-high energy density, electrolytes are also a very critical factor.
However, Zhao Yi does not plan to do this work himself, because he believes that Cornerstone Materials can do a good job in this job, and electrolytes are never the best, only better.
So they can study it slowly for a long time. As the performance of the electrolyte becomes more and more superior, the energy density of the graphene supercapacitor will also become higher and higher.
As for the electrolyte required for current research, just use the conventional electrolyte sodium hydroxide instead. At present, we only solve the main problem, and improving performance is another task.
Moreover, the urbanization construction of China Housing Corporation has not yet started, and the installation of these graphene supercapacitor energy storage will not start until all other work is completed.
Therefore, Cornerstone Materials has sufficient time to carry out this work. If it were not for the fear that they would not be able to develop the technology for large-scale preparation of graphene for a long time, he would be too lazy to do this work himself.
In this way, Zhao Yi stayed here for a month. After all the experimental results were compiled, the photovoltaic coating material led by Zhao Yi finally got what he wanted after many bumps and bumps. result.
Sure enough, the preparation process based on the intelligent material analysis and calculation simulation system was not reliable. After making no less than ten adjustments, Zhao Yi finally obtained a satisfactory answer.
Then there is the preparation of graphene. Since the important microbial cultivation came from Zhou Ling, after actual verification, there were no accidents and it was completed very smoothly.
From now on, the preparation of graphene can be manufactured on a large scale, which will not only have an important impact on this project, but also have a great impact on the current semiconductor industry.
However, Zhao Yi has no plans to launch any carbon-based chips, because the service life of silicon-based chips has not yet come to an end, and he has an absolute lead in silicon-based chips.
In this case, there is no need to dig your own grave. Therefore, if you want to launch carbon-based chips, you still need to wait for the potential of silicon-based chips to be exhausted before they can be applied on a large scale.
As for more application scenarios, Cornerstone Materials still needs to explore them themselves, but Zhao Yi also told that graphene materials will not be supplied to the outside world for the time being and only need to meet the R&D and production needs of brother units.
After these things were prepared in physical form, laboratory researchers used these materials to build a photovoltaic coating power generation system.
According to laboratory data, the photoelectric conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic coating material designed by Zhao Yi has reached the ideal design value, which is 60%. However, in actual application, more than 50% is a very good result.
Because in the external environment, dust on the coating and other reasons will definitely have a great impact on the conversion efficiency. In the future, the exterior of some buildings will need to be cleaned from time to time to maintain good photoelectric conversion efficiency.
The second is the supercapacitor made of graphene. The energy density suddenly reaches 500Wh/kg. This energy density is actually not a bit better than the energy density of lithium batteries.
This kind of battery can be used to build electric cars. In the previous life, BYD's lithium iron phosphate battery had an energy density of only 180Wh/kg. You can see the difference between the two.
However, Zhao Yi is not satisfied with this. Zhao Yi hopes to increase the electric energy density by at least 5 times in the next time, that is, to at least reach 2500Wh/KG, and at the same time improve other aspects of performance.
As for when to apply it to electric vehicles, Zhao Yi is still undecided, mainly because the current fuel vehicles still have great potential to be tapped, and energy security is not that urgent.
Of course, in this era, the requirements for energy conservation and emission reduction are not so stringent, so Zhao Yi plans to take a look and see if it is really necessary to launch an electric vehicle, it will not be a very difficult thing.
In the final analysis, electric vehicles have two cores. The first is the battery, and the second is the electric motor. As long as there are no problems with these two, the rest are just details.
However, preparations still need to be made, so after leaving Cornerstone Materials Company, Zhao Yi went directly to Shenlong Automobile Company and asked them to do preliminary research and development work on electric vehicles.
They don't have to worry about batteries. Cornerstone Materials can completely meet their needs, so their research and development focuses on high-performance automotive motors and the design of the entire vehicle.
At this point, Zhao Yi's mission in Nanjing has been successfully completed. As for the photovoltaic ceramics before the Photovoltaic Materials Laboratory, they also have very high practical value.
But compared to photovoltaic coatings, they are not that advanced. Now Zhao Yi is not sure whether to sell photovoltaic coatings to others. If they are sold to others, then there is no need to produce photovoltaic ceramics.
However, after some weighing, Zhao Yi still plans to arrange the photovoltaic ceramic industry to Jingdezhen, and the production of photovoltaic coatings will also be placed there. In other words, photovoltaic coatings will not be sold for the time being.
Because this kind of photovoltaic coating can not only be used for building photovoltaic power generation, but also has a wide range of uses in other places, such as military equipment and space equipment.
If combined with these things, it can be regarded as an export-controlled product. More importantly, photovoltaic ceramic products will be developed in vain, so he plans to let Cornerstone Materials Company sell them to European and American countries first.
Because the excellent photoelectric conversion efficiency of photovoltaic ceramics is much higher than that of current silicon photovoltaic products, they will definitely be warmly welcomed by European and American countries, and their service life is longer, so it is understandable that they are more expensive.
From this point of view, Zhao Yi's capitalist nature is fully exposed. He obviously has better things, but he wants to make a lot of money with inferior and inferior products. Besides, if their consumers know about it, they will probably be angry. Vomiting blood.
Because it will take about 5 years for this kind of photovoltaic coating material to be used on a large scale. During this period, it is time for photovoltaic ceramics to show their power. (End of chapter)