Material Empire

The two stayed in the jewelry store for less than 10 minutes before fleeing. Picking jewelry also requires some skills, and Qin Hai and Tranquility undoubtedly lack such skills.

According to Qin Hai's original thinking, it was nothing more than a mere diamond ring. At worst, he would only buy the expensive one and not the right one. As long as he could win the smile of a beautiful woman, what was spending a little money to the rich and powerful Chairman Qin?

It's a pity that the difference between practice and theory is too far. When more than a dozen diamond rings of different grades were placed in front of the two of them, Qin Hai deeply understood what it means to be tricky. Against the backdrop of high-end diamond rings, those low-end items are obviously unattractive. But when they set their sights on those diamond rings with titles such as "Queen of India" and "Eye of Africa", they found that the prices of these diamond rings were suffocatingly high.

Qin Hai was ready to ruthlessly "bleed", but faced with the high price of millions of dollars, he still couldn't convince himself to make a move. The annual salary of an ordinary worker in China is only more than one thousand yuan, and a diamond ring is equivalent to a worker's salary of 1,000 years. No matter how prodigal Qin Hai is, he is reluctant to spend so much money on a piece of jewelry.

As for Tranquility, when she saw the price of the diamond ring, her face turned pale with fright, how dare she accept the clerk's invitation to try it on. At the end, the two of them could only find an excuse to slip away with embarrassing expressions.

"Hehehe..." After running tens of meters away from the jewelry store, after making sure that there was no clerk watching them outside the door, Tranquility slowed down, took Qin Hai's arm, and laughed hard.

"What are you laughing at?" Qin Hai was in a bit of a panic. As a tall, rich and handsome man who had vowed to buy a diamond ring to propose marriage, it was really embarrassing to run away because of the price of the jewelry.

"Qin Hai, you said that you are a big boss with a net worth of tens of billions anyway, why can't you buy a diamond ring worth 1 million dollars?" Tranquility said jokingly, she seemed to have forgotten that she just bought a diamond ring from the jewelry store. When escaping, she ran faster than Qin Hai, fearing that it would cost a lot of money to take a second look.

"Isn't this price too deceitful? I didn't see any difference between that 'Princess Rose' diamond and other diamonds. It's just that the color is a bit more transparent than other diamonds, so the price is so expensive." More than ten times?" Qin Hai muttered, "Even if I have money, it doesn't mean I should be taken advantage of."

Tranquility retorted: "What does it mean to be taken advantage of? He is a jeweler for hundreds of years, but he still doesn't understand the price of jewelry? Do you understand the principle that you get what you pay for? Don't you think that 'Princess Rose' is more expensive than others?" Are your diamonds good-looking? You can tell by comparing them."

"You don't really like it, do you?" Qin Hai said seriously, "If you really like it, then let's go back and buy it now. You are right, 1 million US dollars is not too much."

"Don't, don't, I'm just kidding." Tranquility quickly denied. From the bottom of her heart, she certainly likes beautiful diamonds, but it is beyond her mental capacity to spend $1 million on a diamond. In any case, she is also a child who grew up in an ordinary working family, and she has received frugal education since she was a child. Even if her family is rich now, and her boyfriend Qin Hai is even a billionaire, she hasn't developed the habit of being extravagant.

"If I spend 1 million to buy you a diamond ring, Lao Ning will scold me to death regardless of others." Qin Hai made an excuse for his stinginess. But this excuse is indeed true. If he bought this diamond ring, Ning Zhongying would definitely be furious, and he and Tranquility would be scolded bloody by Ning Zhongying. Based on his understanding of Ning Zhongying, he knew that this was definitely not alarmist talk.

"Okay Qin Hai, do you dare to call my father Lao Ning now?" Tranquility warned with widened eyes.

"It's not me who called it first, it was your brother Fatty who called it that in private, okay?" Qin Hai decisively sold Ning Mo.

Tranquility smiled and said: "Speaking of my brother, I remembered it. When you accompanied my brother to buy a diamond ring, how did you buy it? Why didn't I hear that you escaped that time."

"It's in Pujiang." Qin Hai explained, "We went to the best jewelry store, and once we got there, we asked the clerk to bring out the best diamond ring. After the fat man saw it, he said it was beautiful and the price was not expensive. I bought it. The best diamond ring in the store is more than 170,000 RMB, which is only more than 30,000 US dollars. I also planned this way just now, but who knew that diamond rings in Paris are so expensive.”

"That store just now had a diamond ring worth more than 30,000 dollars, why didn't you buy it?" Tranquility challenged.

Qin Hai shook his head: "Here, more than 30,000 US dollars is the lowest grade. If I choose the lowest grade to buy, don't I lose a lot of talk?"

"Are you still afraid of losing the conversation?" Tranquility said with a smile. In her heart, she actually felt a bit uncomfortable to buy the cheapest diamond ring in a store. After all, a diamond ring is an ornament with special meaning, and she can't just let it go.

"Actually, it's not a matter of talking about it, but I don't think this thing is worth so much money." Qin Haidao, "In the eyes of a material expert, isn't the so-called diamond an allotrope of graphite? $1 million , how much graphite can we buy, why don't we make a graphite ring by ourselves?"

The so-called allotropes are substances composed of the same element with different physical properties. The chemical composition of diamond and graphite is exactly the same, both are made of carbon. Just because of the difference in the way the carbon atoms are arranged, one becomes the diamond, the king of hardness, and the other becomes the soft graphite. Qin Hai said that diamonds and graphite are the same thing, which can be regarded as a kind of cleverness of materials scientists.

Tranquility laughed angrily at Qin Hai's brain hole, she pointed at Qin Hai and said: "You can figure it out, are you still planning to cut graphite into thin slices to make rings for rings? People who know say I wear What I wear is an allotrope of diamond, and people who don’t know it think I’m wearing a thimble.”

The purpose of Qin Hai's nonsense was just to cover up the previous embarrassment. Seeing that Tranquility's attention had been successfully drawn away, he also heaved a sigh of relief and said, "Actually, it's not impossible to cut graphite into thin slices. If If it's sliced ​​thin enough..."

Having said that, he suddenly stopped, staring blankly at Ning Jing, his eyes widened.

"What's the matter? Is there something on my face?" Tranquility was bewildered by Qin Hai's actions, and subconsciously reached out to wipe her face, but there was nothing dirty on her hands.

"It's not the face, I mean...how did you think of cutting graphite into thin slices?" Qin Hai asked in a daze.

"Is there anything wrong with cutting graphite into thin slices?" Tranquility said strangely, "If you want to make a ring, don't you need thin slices?...Qin Hai, you don't really want to make a graphite ring, do you?"

"Why not?" Qin Hai had a strange smile on his face, "If I can cut graphite very thin, so thin that it is only one atom thick, the ring I made must be very beautiful and very strong."

"Qin Hai, are you okay?" Tranquility didn't know, stretched out his hand to push Qin Hai, and said, "How can it be possible to cut out graphite that is only one atom thick? You are not talking about carbon nanotubes, are you?"

The so-called carbon nanotubes refer to elongated tubular materials curled from single-layer or multi-layer graphite sheets, with an inner diameter generally below 3 nanometers and a length of about 1 micron. This material was discovered by Japanese scholars in 1991 when observing arc vacuum evaporation graphite electrode products with a high-resolution electron microscope. Subsequently, many scholars invented several preparation methods, making it an important new nanomaterial.

Depending on the diameter and helix angle, carbon nanotubes can exhibit the characteristics of conduction, semiconduction and insulation respectively, and can be made into electronic components at the molecular level. It also has high strength and elasticity, yet is very light in weight, so it may be used to make lightweight high-strength fibers. Science fiction writers once imagined building an elevator between the earth and the moon to facilitate the round trip. Some people pointed out that if such an elevator is to be made, the most ideal material is carbon nanotube fiber.

Regarding carbon nanotubes, there is another very interesting situation, that is, its ability to absorb light is extremely strong. Some scientists have used carbon nanotubes to make materials that are said to be able to completely absorb light. That is to say, when the light shines on this material, there will be no slight reflection, so it can be called the blackest material in the world.

Tranquility is doing superconducting research, and she has also been concerned about the new material of carbon nanotubes, but she can't figure out why Qin Hai would think of such a material inexplicably, is it because she said "cut graphite into flakes"?

Qin Hai gave a negative answer to Tranquility's guess: "NoNoNo, it is not carbon nanotubes, but a two-dimensional material. It is a thin film formed by interconnecting carbon atoms, so thin that it is only as thin as one carbon atom. Thick. Think about it, what kind of performance will such a thin material have."

"A thin-film material as thick as 1 atom?" Tranquility frowned and thought for a while, and said, "I can't imagine such a material. If it is only as thick as 1 atom, will this material be very fragile? I doubt it." Can it exist in reality?"

"Carbon nanotubes are 1 atom thick, but they are rolled into a tube. If you cut a carbon nanotube and flatten it, isn't it a thin sheet with a thickness of 1 atom? Do you think the strength of carbon nanotubes How?"

Qin Hai smiled and enlightened Tranquility. In fact, he didn't need Tranquility to give any answer, because he was very familiar with the characteristics of the material he described. This kind of material is a new type of material that has stirred up excitement in the field of materials science and even in the economic field in the first ten years of the 21st century:

Graphene!

Graphene enters the scene. Did you know that the cover of this book is the atomic structure diagram of graphene, which is a very amazing material