Chapter 316 Something Big

The samples traveled across the country and finally arrived at the Frick Chemistry Laboratory.

Lu Zhou picked up the package and took the samples to his temporary laboratory.

He recently found out that not only did the Frick Chemistry Laboratory offer third-party testing services, but their laboratory could be rented for a fee, and he could buy time credits to use their equipment.

The fees for third-party testing services were generally more expensive and were in the range of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the price for renting the equipment was more reasonable.

Lu Zhou rented a piece of equipment. He then called Professor Chiric and borrowed a PhD student to be his assistant.

Just like last time, his assistant was Connie.

This buff PhD student looked like a rugby player, but he was much more jacked compared to last year.

Lu Zhou looked at Connie weirdly.

"Did you switch to researching biology?"

Connie was confused, and he asked, "No, why did you ask that?"

"No reason…" Lu Zhou shook his head and said, "Forget about it."

If this guy gets any buffer, he would basically be a hulk.

But he'll probably get offended if I say this.

"… Actually, I know what you want to say." Connie sighed and scratched his head as he said, "Because I'm too jacked, Professor Chiric doesn't let me operate the equipment. He said that I might break it."

"That's…" Lu Zhou looked at Connie and didn't know how to comfort him. Instead, he said, "I won't treat you like that."

Professor Chiric wasn't skinny either. At the very least, he had the physique of a basketball small forward player.

Connie rubbed his nose and said, "Really? What do you need me to do?"

Lu Zhou looked at the scanning electron microscope in the laboratory and said, "Just… help me with the sampling processing. You know how to do it, right?"

Connie smiled and said, "I got this!"

Lu Zhou took out more than 30 samples from the sealed small glass jars and told Connie some important things to be aware of. He then carefully removed a small amount of black powder from the glass jar marked with No. 1 and mixed it with ionized water.

Sarrot had already processed the samples before shipping them. The sample powders were already purified and no further filtration was required.

However, Lu Zhou couldn't just stuff the sample inside as the collection of hollow carbon spheres would worsen the observation.

Under Connie's help, Lu Zhou ultrasonically dispersed each sample and carefully dropped the sample on copper plates.

"Done!"

Finally, after the samples were processed, Lu Zhou sighed and placed down the last piece of copper before he stretched his stiff neck.

Since carbon itself was a conductive material, the processing was complete. If it was an insulator material, the sample had to be processed with gold.

Was this method expensive?

No, actually it wasn't that expensive.

Gold was actually relatively inexpensive compared to the other precious metals and organic reagents used in the laboratory. For the samples sent by Sarrot, the average cost per milligram was more than one hundred dollars.

The reason why Lu Zhou was so meticulous was that the cost of this experiment was coming out of his pocket.

Fortunately, his assistant Connie lived up to his expectations and didn't mess up a single sample. Connie placed the copper plate down and asked Lu Zhou, "My side is done, what do we do next?"

Lu Zhou said, "Let's scan it with the electron microscope."

The rest of the work was easy, and Lu Zhou operated the equipment step by step. He stuck the copper plate onto the sample holder using a conductive plate before he fed it into the chamber.

Once Lu Zhou confirmed that the pressure inside the chamber was stable, he carefully began to input various parameters.

"The emission current is set at 10μA, the working distance is 8mm, and the scanning mode is Sei…"

Lu Zhou used the two joysticks on the sample controller to carefully move the sample into position. Connie stood in front of the computer and adjusted the aperture and acceleration voltage.

The work was completed.

Now, it was time to harvest the results.

This was the easy part.

Lu Zhou could easily collect any data he wanted just by adjusting the resolution, the accelerating voltage, and the working distance.

Connie looked at the equipment and said emotionally, "This thing is much easier to use than a normal electron microscope."

"Of course." Lu Zhou smiled and said, "If the experiment is successful, I can give the rest of the renting credits to you."

Connie said, "Really? Thank you!"

Even though Connie wanted to use Professor Chiric's scanning electron microscope, Professor Chiric didn't want to waste time on his student's PhD thesis. After all, Chiric had a ton of experiments to do himself.

Right now, Lu Zhou was like an angel sent from heaven.

Lu Zhou smiled and said nonchalantly, "Of course, as long as you follow my instructions, I will compensate you."

Connie was even more motivated after hearing Lu Zhou's words.

The resolution was enlarged to the nm scale, and the microstructure of the hollow carbon sphere was visible to the two experimenters.

Lu Zhou looked at the scanning images and was intrigued.

He suddenly thought of something and said, "Connie, from these samples, help me find hollow carbon nanospheres with a specific surface area in the range of [2326m2g-1, 3762m2g-1] and a diameter of [60nm-70nm]!"

"Okay," Connie replied. Without any hesitation, he began to operate the computer. Soon after, he said, "… Professor, samples 11, 14, 15, and 23 all fit your requirements. What does this indicate?"

Lu Zhou found the corresponding sample jars and stared at the black powder inside.

"I need you to do something."

Connie said seriously, "Anything you want."

"Borrow a battery tester and a button-type battery mold for me." Lu Zhou look around the laboratory and added, "And some samples of sulfur.

"I have to do something big."