Chapter 54: Ineffective Boron Powder
When David saw Sarah Black's name on his phone screen, he realized that it had been several days since they'd parted ways at the Churchill Building that night.
Logically, if Sarah had conducted experiments following their new ideas, there should have been preliminary results by now.
David had been busy processing 3D scanning data these past few days, coupled with the whole series of events related to adopting Milo, and had almost forgotten about it.
He pressed the answer button and held the phone to his ear: "Sarah?"
Sarah's voice came from the other end of the line, sounding a little subdued, even with a hint of formality: "Professor Zhou! It's Sarah!"
David was slightly taken aback. In the few months since he'd been exceptionally granted tenure, only on very rare formal occasions had anyone called him "Professor Zhou"—such as departmental faculty meetings, or formal email correspondence with university administration.
In daily interactions, colleagues and friends either called him "David" or "Dr. Zhou."
Sarah's current form of address on the phone still made him feel a bit uncomfortable.
"Please, Sarah, just call me David. I think we're already friends," he said with a smile.
"Of course, David," Sarah's tone relaxed slightly.
"It's just that my use of 'Professor' comes from the shock and admiration for your paper published in Physical Review Letters. That day in the lab, you only casually mentioned that you'd published a paper after joining Caltech, but you didn't say it was in Physical Review Letters or tell me that you were directly granted tenure because of it!"
"It seems you looked up my information after that day?" David said, amused.
"Of course! You, a physicist, solved a major chemistry problem for me. Anyone would be curious."
Sarah continued to explain, "After searching your name, I first saw the paper 'Framework for Distinguishing Scattering Mechanisms in Topological Insulators by Combining Pattern Recognition and Multi-Parameter Scanning,' published in Physical Review Letters, with you as both the first and corresponding author. Then I followed the trail and found a related article in Caltech's official news section—'New Assistant Professor David Zhou in Physics Department Granted Exceptional Tenure for Groundbreaking Research.' David, you were way too modest!"
David chuckled, "Ha, to be honest, getting tenure with just one paper, I was worried you'd think I didn't deserve it if you knew."
"How could that be!" Sarah's voice was filled with genuine admiration. "Although I don't study physics, I still have basic academic judgment. Your paper pioneered a completely new research methodology and provided inspiring approaches for several fields. Caltech granting you tenure is absolutely justified. If Caltech hadn't moved quickly, I'm sure Harvard, Stanford, or MIT would have jumped at the chance to offer you tenure and recruit you. If I had written that paper, I'd want to print it out and frame it on my wall—heck, I'd feel like I deserved a MacArthur Genius Grant!"
"Alright, Sarah," David said, smiling as he interrupted her enthusiastic praise. "I'm guessing you didn't just call to give me a standing ovation. Let's get to the point—have you run into problems with the experiment?"
Sarah sighed suddenly, her voice filled with frustration: "David, you're right. I conducted three rounds of experiments following our new approach, and all of them failed. The performance improvement was negligible, nowhere near the level predicted by the theoretical calculations."
David showed no surprise. Scientific exploration is inherently full of uncertainties, and one success is often preceded by ninety-nine failures. He calmly asked, "Walk me through the process in detail."
Sarah began to explain: the boron powder raw material had to be reordered, she had to recruit a grad student from the same research group to help as her lab assistant because of her fractured wrist, and she'd conducted three experiments continuously over a full day with minimal results... "Wait," David suddenly interrupted, "how did you introduce the boron powder?"
"Ultrasonically dispersed in ethanol, then mixed with the precursor solution."
A crucial detail flashed through David's mind—boron powder has high surface energy, easily agglomerates, and is difficult to disperse uniformly in ethanol. If it's not uniform, the doping effect would be drastically reduced.
"That's the problem," David stated confidently. "The boron powder wasn't uniformly dispersed, leading to excessively high or low local concentrations, making it impossible to effectively suppress carbon vacancy formation."
Silence fell on the other end of the line. David could almost hear Sarah's labored breathing.
"So..." Sarah's voice trembled, "your new idea itself isn't wrong, but we can't implement it experimentally? Because boron powder is inherently difficult to disperse uniformly?"
"The idea is correct, but the implementation method needs adjustment," David thought quickly. "Direct doping with boron powder is indeed difficult to control for uniformity—we need to change our strategy."
He paced around the lab, his mind racing. The path of mild pyrolysis combined with boron powder doping was a dead end, so... "There's a more aggressive but potentially more effective method," David suddenly stopped. "Rapid synthesis under ultra-high pressure with flash annealing."
"Ultra-high pressure? Flash annealing?" A glimmer of hope reignited in Sarah's voice.
"Yes, using the GPPD system—Gas Pressure Pulsed Deposition system," David explained. "Extremely high pressure can suppress vacancy formation, and rapid heating with flash annealing can minimize the material's exposure time in temperature ranges prone to defect formation. Moreover, the GPPD system can introduce reactive gases, allowing us to directly introduce boron-containing precursor gases during deposition, achieving atomic-level uniform doping."
Sarah gasped on the other end of the phone: "GPPD! But David, that system..."
"I know, the machine time is expensive, and it requires specialized training," David interjected. "But this is currently our best shot at success. You should first check with the equipment management office about the specific procedures, and we'll stay in touch."
"David, thank you so much! You've given me hope again!" Sarah's voice was full of excitement. "I'll go check the GPPD system's reservation schedule right away!"
After hanging up the phone, David turned around and saw Leonard looking at him curiously.
"Sarah? That postdoc from the Chemistry Department?" Leonard asked. "Problems again?"
David nodded: "There was an issue with the experimental protocol. I suggested she use the GPPD system for ultra-high pressure rapid synthesis."
"GPPD? That expensive 'super pressure cooker'?"
David chuckled: "Yep, that's the one. Your analogy is pretty accurate!"
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