Great Country Academician

In the office, after Xu Chuan hung up the call with Zhao Guanggui, he quickly called Zheng Hai.

"Zheng Hai, help me arrange a flight back to Jinling."

Zheng Hai's steady voice came from the other side of the phone: "What time? Is it urgent?"

Xu Chuan thought for a while and said, "The sooner the better. There is a research there that needs to be visited."

It is already mid-January in the solar calendar. In ten days, it will be the New Year's Eve and the Spring Festival. He originally planned to stay at CRHPC for a few days and then go home for the New Year.

But now it seems that he has to go back to Xinghai Research Institute again.

This new discovery may have a significant impact on the research in the field of carbon-based chips, and even bring about a key breakthrough.

So he has to go back to see what the situation is.

Hearing this, Zheng Hai's face on the other side of the phone immediately showed a solemn expression. This is the first time Xu Chuan said this, which shows the importance of what happened in Jinling.

Of course, he never expected that Xu Chuan wanted to rush over as soon as possible in order to find out the situation before returning home for the New Year.

However, naturally ordered carbon nanotubes are indeed important, and it is worth him to rush back as quickly as possible.

"Okay, I'll arrange it right away. Is there anything else?" Zheng Hai quickly responded and asked.

"No, just this."

Zheng Hai nodded and said, "Okay, I will contact you as soon as I arrange it. Just wait for me downstairs."

"Okay."

Xu Chuan responded and hung up the phone.

He was still very confident in Zheng Hai's work. At least within the scope of his work, he had never disappointed him.

On the opposite side, Lin Feng looked a little curious and asked, "At this time, you still have to go back to Jinling? The New Year is coming soon."

"Yeah."

Xu Chuan responded, stood up and walked to the desk. While packing his things, he said, "There is something more urgent over there, so I have to go there."

Lin Feng nodded and did not continue to ask.

No scholar who can accept the invitation of the organization from the United States is a fool. Don't ask about things that you shouldn't ask about.

Especially the junior brother standing in front of him, most of the time, the things he came into contact with were state secrets, and they were the top ones.

In fact, even if Xu Chuan was willing to tell him, he didn't want to listen.

Sometimes, the more you know, the more painful it is.

Omniscience is not a blessing, but a punishment.

Not long after packing up, the experimental data from Xinghai Research Institute came.

Xu Chuan clicked on the email, entered the password to open the file inside, and browsed it.

This new material has not yet been named. It was collected from the impact wall of Yaochi Crater when the lunar outpost scientific research station base was conducting a survey on the back of the moon half a month ago.

It is the twelfth new material discovered by humans on the moon so far.

The so-called new material, in simple terms, is a new substance that does not exist on Earth.

As they explore the moon, more and more new substances are discovered.

And because of the special environment on the moon, there are many substances of great research value in both the soil on the moon and the moon rocks.

For example, Parsad stone.

This is the second new lunar material discovered by the United States during its lunar exploration. It is a very rare natural mineral and one of the minerals on the moon. It has extremely strong radiation resistance.

Or Spes stone, whose high-performance optical waveguide characteristics have extremely high research value in the fields of optical sensors, optical fiber transmission equipment, etc.

There is also Chang'e stone. The lunar soil containing Chang'e stone often contains extremely valuable rare earth materials.

And now they have discovered this new material on the Yaochi crater, the same is true.

Its naturally generated neat and hierarchical carbon nanotubes have great research value.

The core is undoubtedly to guide the research direction of carbon-based chips and carbon-based transistors!

You know, the development of the chip field is not only a field that China has always dreamed of, but also the focus of Western countries led by the United States.

In this field, relying on the advantages of the past few decades, Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek and other companies have built a huge wall around chips through technology and patents, blocking other countries and companies from the door.

Not only that, in conjunction with lithography machines, wafers, EDA and other fields, these countries and companies have established a complete set of standards around silicon-based chips.

This is the most terrifying part.

Because technology will become outdated and patents will expire, but standards are something that can continue forever.

Technology patenting, patent standardization, and standard globalization are the main forms of global market competition today.

With the help of standards as a carrier and patents as a weapon, companies and countries can stand at the top of the market and continuously reap the benefits of other countries or companies.

Don’t you see that in the field of chips, China’s annual import volume is calculated in units of ‘billions’, whether it is the number of chips or the overall cost, it is huge.

For example, in 2022, the total import volume of chips exceeded 2.3 trillion RMB, which is about 460 billion yuan at an exchange rate of 5 to 1.

Although it has dropped slightly in 2023, it is still as high as 2.1 trillion RMB, close to 450 billion yuan.

This amount, in general, is almost the same as the total amount of crude oil imported by China before the realization of controlled nuclear fusion technology.

It can be seen that the amount of money spent on this every year is a huge number.

China has not thought about self-research, and has been doing related things, but this technology that has completely formed a monopoly system is not so easy to break through.

And even if you have made research progress on silicon-based chips, it is extremely difficult to break the standards and monopolies established by Western countries for this purpose.

The only way to really break through in the chip field is to find another way and change the track.

Carbon-based chips are one of the fields chosen by China, and they are also the direction of key research and development and investment.

However, in an industry like chips, which is known as the "food of modern industry" and the shining pearl of the semiconductor field, it is extremely difficult to achieve overtaking on the curve.

Even with a lot of manpower and material resources and various support policies, the current carbon-based chips are still in the laboratory research and development stage.

Although many laboratories and research institutions have made some carbon-based chips, they are far from being comparable to silicon-based chips in terms of the number of integrated carbon-based transistors, operating efficiency, and computing accuracy.

If Xu Chuan remembers correctly, the best progress in this aspect of information he is paying attention to should be the laboratory products made by the research team led by Professor Zhang Zhiyong of the School of Electronics of Peking University.

A tensor processor chip that integrates 3,000 carbon-based transistors and a 3-micron process technology node.

But this is still a long way from commercialization.

If the development of "five-nanometer" carbon-based chips is regarded as climbing Mount Everest, with the current development of the domestic carbon-based chip field, it has just entered western Tibet, and it can even be said that it has not even reached the foot of Mount Everest.

It's very simple, because all aspects of technology are not mature.

In particular, the number of carbon-based transistors is a difficult problem among difficult problems.

As we all know, the core of modern industrial chips lies in the number of transistors.

This is the most basic and core.

The more transistors there are, the stronger its performance is, and silicon-based chips are basically integrated with transistors in the unit of "billions".

Taking Intel's 10nm process chip as an example, its transistor density is about 100 million to 100.8 million transistors per square millimeter.

Carbon-based chips currently have 3,000 transistors, not even a fraction of silicon-based chips, which shows the huge gap between the two.

The reason why carbon-based chips are so difficult to break through is that the core problem is how to accurately and stably arrange and control carbon materials such as "carbon nanotube arrays" or "graphene" to form a carbon-based transistor integrated array.

This is the biggest problem in the production and preparation of carbon-based chips, and there is no excellent solution so far.

Researchers in the laboratory can integrate carbon nanotransistors on chips through expensive and complex production processes, but industrial production is not possible.

Efficient, low-cost, large-scale industrial production is one of the core factors to ensure the commercialization of carbon-based chips.

This is also the reason why Xu Chuan attaches so much importance to the natural neatly arranged carbon nanotubes found on the Yaochi crater on the moon.

By analyzing the formation of this new substance, they may be able to find a way to stably arrange carbon nanotubes on carbon-based chips!

In the office, Xu Chuan flipped through the experimental data sent by Xinghai Research Institute.

About half an hour later, the phone on the table vibrated again.

"Professor, the nearest flight is ready. I'm waiting for you downstairs in Bagua Building."

"Okay, I'll go down now."

As he said that, Xu Chuan hung up the phone, put the phone back in his pocket, folded the laptop and put it in his backpack, picked it up and walked out.

Downstairs, Zheng Hai had already driven the car to the door of the building.

When Xu Chuan got in the car, just when he thought they were going directly to Huanghua Airport, the car turned and came to the other side of the CRHPC base.

"Huh? Aren't we going to the airport?"

Looking at the car driving in the base, which was obviously not going to the exit, Xu Chuan asked curiously.

"Yes, but we're not going there by car. We're taking another faster means of transportation." Zheng Hai didn't respond and drove steadily.

After a while, in a corner of the base, through the car window, Xu Chuan saw a dark green helicopter parked steadily on the open ground, and the propeller on top was rotating at a moderate speed.

"Helicopter?"

Looking at the "vehicle" in front of him, Xu Chuan was stunned for a moment and looked at Zheng Hai.

Zheng Hai scratched his head and said with a smile: "Well, didn't you say the faster the better? This is faster."

Xu Chuan: "."

Although he said the faster the better, there is no need to dispatch a helicopter, right?

"Professor, you shouldn't be dizzy by helicopters, right?"

Helping to pick up the backpack from the car, Zheng Hai smiled a little embarrassedly and asked.

At this point, he probably understood that he had misunderstood Xu Chuan's meaning. However, the meaning on the phone sounded very serious, and others would probably misunderstand it, so he urgently dispatched a helicopter from the armed police.

After all, no matter how fast you drive, it's not as fast as this, right?

Glancing at the roaring helicopter, Xu Chuan shrugged and said, "I don't know. I've never ridden in a helicopter."

He has taken a plane many times, and even a space shuttle, but he has never taken a helicopter. This is his first time.

"Then give it a try?"

Zheng Hai smiled and continued, "There is already a direct flight to Jinling waiting for us at Huanghua Airport. It has been arranged. This is the fastest way to get to Jinling."

"Okay."

Xu Chuan breathed a sigh of relief and walked towards the helicopter. Since he was here, he couldn't withdraw. Anyway, he had never taken a helicopter, so he just took it as an experience of new life.

With the help of the assistant next to him and a security guard, Xu Chuan also boarded the helicopter after half bending over to avoid the strong wind from the propeller above his head.

"Professor, it will be noisy during the flight. It is recommended to wear earmuffs."

In the cabin, the accompanying assistant Tang Sijia handed over a pair of black earmuffs. Xu Chuan nodded, took it and put it on his ears.

After fastening the seat belt, Zheng Hai checked it, and the propeller whistled and took the helicopter away from the ground.

Although the earmuffs were of good quality and blocked most of the noise, the feeling of the helicopter taking off was really impressive.

Although the pilot was trying his best to keep the flight posture stable, for Xu Chuan, the tension was still greater than the novelty and excitement.

Especially when taking off, the helicopter and the fixed-wing aircraft were completely different, which made him almost feel like he was back to the moment of the crash before his rebirth.

Because the former took off with the nose down to a certain extent, with a sense of diving, while the fixed-wing aircraft looked up.

This moment of weightlessness made him subconsciously grab the seat belt tied to his body, and his face almost turned pale.

Fortunately, after he reacted, this strange feeling disappeared.

"Professor, are you okay?"

Noticing the discomfort on his face, Tang Sijia asked, "Are you afraid of heights? Or are you feeling uncomfortable somewhere? Do you need airsickness medicine?"

After taking a deep breath and recovering from the shock, Xu Chuan shook his head and said, "It's okay, no, I just wasn't used to the takeoff."

Tang Sijia: "If you feel uncomfortable, please tell me. Your health is part of my responsibility."

"Yes, I will." Xu Chuan nodded, his eyes fell on the scenery outside through the glass window, admiring the scenery outside.

He is not afraid of heights, but the way the helicopter takes off is really unfriendly to people like him who have psychological shadows.

But it was only during the takeoff period, and it was fine afterwards. There were no other problems except for some noise and bumps.

As for the speed, it must be said that it is indeed very fast.

From Taohualing, the headquarters of CRHPC, to Huanghua International Airport, a distance of more than 40 kilometers, it took only ten minutes to get there directly.

Moreover, it drove directly into the airport's internal runway and stopped not far from the waiting flight to Jinling. He could get off and board the plane directly.

It was indeed very convenient, but if Xu Chuan was given another chance to choose, he would definitely regret agreeing to take a helicopter.

For him, this should be the first and last time to take this thing.

If there was a choice, he would rather take a three-wheeled motorcycle than take this again.