Chapter 285 - 219: The Essence of Chemistry

Chapter 285: Chapter 219: The Essence of Chemistry

A mere five million. For the current joint project team, it was just a drop in the bucket—the cost of a few pieces of imported precision equipment.

Seeing that Chen Lin wasn’t hung up on the money, Tang Xuebing was even more pleased. He wasted no more time and spread the thick document out on the table.

"Let’s skip the pleasantries and get right to the point!"

The smile on Tang Xuebing’s face faded, replaced by the distinct rigor and focus of a scientific researcher.

He pointed to a complex chart in the document and began to explain the problem they were facing.

"Professor Chen, take a look."

"The lithium dendrite growth problem we solved before did indeed result in a quantum leap for the battery’s stability and lifespan. However, in our follow-up tests, we discovered a new contradiction."

Tang Xuebing picked up a pen and circled a chemical formula on the chart.

"Ethylene carbonate, EC."

"This stuff is one of the most common solvents in electrolytes. It has a high dielectric constant and good film-forming properties, so it’s supposed to be a good thing. But—"

Tang Xuebing’s tone shifted, and his brow furrowed into a deep frown.

"Our experimental data shows a direct positive correlation between the content of ethylene carbonate and the phenomenon of lithium precipitation at the negative electrode!"

"Simply put, the more ethylene carbonate you add to the electrolyte, the faster lithium metal precipitates at the negative electrode, the more vigorously the lithium dendrites grow, and the more likely the battery is to short-circuit and explode."

Chen Lin nodded slightly, following his train of thought. "Then why not just reduce its content?"

"That’s precisely the problem!" Professor Lu Zhongqi, who was sitting nearby, couldn’t help but interject with a sigh. "We tried reducing the ethylene carbonate content. The lithium precipitation did slow down, but the battery’s ionic conductivity also plummeted, and its low-temperature performance was abysmal."

"It’s like..." Professor Lu came up with an analogy. "You want the horse to run, but you won’t give it any grass to eat. How is it supposed to run?"

Tang Xuebing continued:

"So, our current line of thinking is to find a new additive."

"This additive needs to act like an ’inhibitor,’ precisely controlling the lithium precipitation reaction caused by the ethylene carbonate without affecting the battery’s overall performance."

At this, Tang Xuebing spread his hands helplessly.

"But, Professor Chen, you know as well as I do that chemistry can sometimes be an arcane art."

"If we want to find the most suitable additive from among thousands upon thousands of compounds by just testing them one by one in the lab... using this trial-and-error method, we might get a result in a few months if we’re lucky. If we’re not, it could take a year or two without any guarantee of success."

"We can afford to wait, but the nation’s strategic window of opportunity can’t!"

Tang Xuebing’s gaze burned as he looked at Chen Lin, as if he were looking at his last lifeline.

"That’s why I thought of you!"

"I want to use your mathematical abilities to ’calculate’ the most suitable additive!"

Hearing this, Chen Lin raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Calculate it?"

"Yes! Calculate it!"

The more Tang Xuebing spoke, the more excited he became, his typical materials science expert fanaticism flaring up again.

"Professor Chen, many people think chemistry and mathematics are worlds apart, but that’s just a layman’s view of the spectacle!"

"In textbooks, chemical reactions are just lines of dull formula transformations. In the lab, they’re just an assortment of beakers and test tubes."

"But!"

Tang Xuebing’s tone suddenly grew heavy, and he tapped his finger forcefully on the desk.

"If we look at the microscopic level, at the fundamental nature of it all, every chemical reaction, in the final analysis, is just the breaking of old chemical bonds and the formation of new ones!"

"Redox reactions are essentially the gain or loss of electrons outside the atomic nucleus, changing the atomic structure. Double displacement reactions are essentially the rearrangement and recombination of atoms."

"And what is the even deeper essence behind all this?"

Tang Xuebing answered his own question, his eyes shining. "It’s the flow of electron clouds! It’s the exchange of energy!"

"To determine if and how a reaction will occur, what do we look at? Thermodynamics, kinetics, enthalpy change, entropy change, Gibbs free energy, activation energy..."

Tang Xuebing rattled off a string of technical terms, earning a look of admiration from Yan Lin beside him. As for Chen Lin... ’though he felt a bit dizzy, he was deeply shaken.’

"If we trace the explanatory chain of chemistry all the way back, eventually, all problems in the natural sciences can be reduced to Physics."

"Physics is the bedrock of the natural sciences."

Having said that, Tang Xuebing suddenly chuckled and looked at Chen Lin.

"Of course, we all know that while mathematics isn’t a natural science, it is the language used to describe the natural sciences!"

"Since the essence of chemistry is Physics—the movement of electrons, the change in energy—then it can definitely be described with mathematics!"

"For example, the rate of a chemical reaction—that’s a Calculus equation! Electron structure and reaction mechanisms—that’s wave functions and group theory! As for the laws of motion at the molecular level, that’s molecular dynamics simulation, which is just a huge pile of Calculus, probability, statistics, and optimization algorithms!"

Tang Xuebing said all this in one breath, finally offering a concluding statement:

"Therefore, Professor Chen, theoretically speaking, as long as we know all the information and boundary conditions of the reactive materials, we can completely skip the lengthy experimental steps and directly use mathematics to simulate the entire reaction process!"

"What we need to do isn’t to look for a needle in a haystack, but to follow a map to our destination!"

After hearing all this, Chen Lin couldn’t help but nod to himself.

’This Professor Tang, to have become a doctoral advisor at the Science and Technology University, really knew his stuff. This whole theory of "computational materials science" was a closed loop, logically irrefutable.’

’Moreover, it was strikingly similar to the approach Chen Lin had previously used to optimize neural network architectures for large AI models with mathematical derivations.’

"Professor Tang, I understand the principle."

Chen Lin leaned forward slightly, his face wearing that signature smile of confidence and composure.

"So, I assume you’ve already done the work of abstracting and summarizing the problem for me?"

His knowledge base was much stronger than before, but he wasn’t a chemistry major. If he really had to build a model from a pile of chemical equations, he’d be completely lost.

"Of course!"

Tang Xuebing was well-prepared. As if performing a magic trick, he pulled a pre-organized stack of A4 paper from the very bottom of the file folder and handed it to Chen Lin with both hands.

"Professor Chen, we really put in the effort this time. We gathered the wisdom of several senior colleagues from the Science and Technology University’s Physics and Mathematics departments to abstract this into a purely mathematical problem for you!"

Chen Lin took the stack of papers and looked down.

There were no chemical symbols on the pages, no benzene rings or carbon chains.

Instead, they were filled with dense, bewildering mathematical formulas.

A variation of the Schr?dinger equation...

Topological structure analysis of a high-dimensional potential energy surface...

Eigenvalue solutions for a system of nonlinear partial differential equations...

And an extremely complex functional extremum problem involving multi-objective optimization.

In that instant, the [Little Mathematician] title within Chen Lin was activated.

The once-dull symbols seemed to come alive in his eyes, automatically arranging, combining, and evolving.

’This is a geometric problem of finding the point of lowest energy in a hyper-dimensional space!’