Material Empire

Graphene is not cabbage, or at least not yet. Provide 100 copies of graphene to the institutions that came to the seminar for research, each serving is limited to one gram, no one will think that this is stingy from the Ann River Institute of Materials Science and Technology, on the contrary, everyone is shocked by this generous amount. A full 100 grams of graphene is completely beyond the laboratory's preparation capacity, which is enough to show that the Anhe Institute of Materials Science and Technology has been able to industrially prepare graphene.

Even the 100 copies of graphene were not provided by the School of Materials to participating institutions for free. Qin Hai made it very clear: each institution is limited to one copy, which means that it needs to be purchased with money.

Immediately, someone asked Wang Xiaochen for the price of graphene and the price of renting a laboratory. Wang Xiaochen's answer shocked everyone again: the price of graphene per gram is US$100, and the rented laboratory charges from US$200 to US$1,000 per day depending on the equipment and reagents required.

For the latter item, everyone has nothing to say, and they all know that this is a price of conscience. It is also necessary to temporarily rent a laboratory with various analytical equipment in a foreign university. If the equipment used is relatively high-end, the price will even be higher.

What shocked everyone was the quotation in the previous item, which was $100 per gram of graphene, which was beyond everyone's imagination. However, most people think that the price is too cheap, and those who think the price is too expensive basically have no actual research in this field, and are purely looking for business cooperation with those institutions.

"Miss Wang, is the price of 100 US dollars per gram your public quotation?" A scholar from the United States asked. One of the purposes of his visit to China this time was to purchase a batch of graphene for further experiments. So the question of price must be asked clearly.

Wang Xiaochen smiled and replied: "Sir, I need to explain that the graphene price we charge this time is only a symbolic fee. Our current graphene production is still very low, and it is impossible to sell at such a low price. Public sale of graphene products.”

"So if I want to be able to buy 100 grams of graphene, how much will it cost?" the scholar asked seriously.

The people around were also staring at Wang Xiaochen nervously, waiting for her answer. This scholar is not the only one who wants to bring a batch of graphene back from China. There are also some companies who come with the idea of ​​purchasing graphene as an industrial raw material. The quantity and price that the Anhe School of Materials can supply , are what they are most concerned about.

Wang Xiaochen was well prepared for this question, she pretended to be embarrassed, and said: "Sir, if you just want to buy 100 grams of graphene this time, I can only express my apology, I am afraid we will not be able to satisfy your request." Requirements. As I said just now, our current graphene output is very low, only enough to meet our own experimental needs, and a little surplus can be provided to important cooperative institutions. We are now building a graphene production line, about It will be put into production in half a year, and we expect to be able to supply graphene products to the market at a rate of 5 kilograms per day."

"So, how much do you expect the supply price to be?" asked a European materials trader.

"I can't give you an exact answer, but according to our engineer's estimate, our supply price per gram of graphene will be expected to be less than $20 by then." Wang Xiaochen replied.

"20 dollars!"

Everyone sighed.

The use of a new material is closely related to its price. For example, when carbon fiber first appeared, the price was astonishingly high, so only high-end fields such as aerospace and aviation could use it; then, with the improvement of technology, the price of carbon fiber continued to drop, so some people Use it to make cars, bikes, fishing rods, and more. If one day carbon fiber can be as cheap as moso bamboo, there will naturally be carbon fiber furniture, packing boxes, and fences. All of this is directly determined by the price.

The same is true for the application of graphene. Since industrially produced graphene has not yet appeared on the market, no one knows what its price will be. $100 or $1,000 per gram is a possible outcome. Faced with different prices, manufacturers need to consider what products to use to make, and need to estimate the pricing of the final product and the market space.

Graphene at $20 per gram is far lower than most people expected. When Wang Xiaochen reported this price, many people were quickly thinking about how to maximize the development and utilization of this new material. As for How to realize these applications is naturally a headache for scientists and engineers.

"Ms. Wang, will you continue to increase graphene production capacity in the future?"

A somewhat strange voice came out from the crowd, and everyone followed the reputation, and saw that the person speaking was a wretched Asian. From his English pronunciation, it can basically be guessed that this should be from the Dongying's guests.

The person who spoke was Gen. Yoshida, the technical director of Shinzuka Chemical. However, his identity registered in the guest register of the School of Materials was a lecturer at a university in Osaka. Xinzuka Chemical is quite famous in the research and development and production of carbon materials, and Yoshida Gen worried that his true identity would make Daqin Group vigilant.

Yoshida Gen came to Hongze, naturally, to find out the reality of the Daqin Group, and at the same time actually get in touch with the finished graphene, which is very important for his team to develop the industrial preparation process of graphene. When everyone was asking questions to Wang Xiaochen just now, he just mingled in the crowd and listened. Seeing that Wang Xiaochen had a natural and cute look, he couldn't help asking questions, hoping to find out more information from this female assistant.

Wang Xiaochen looked up at Gen Yoshida, nodded, and said, "Of course we will continue to increase the production capacity of graphene. Our group's goal is to achieve an annual output of more than 1,000 tons, and the price will drop to around US$100 to US$200 per kilogram. , so that graphene can become a new material with a wide range of applications."

"100 US dollars per kilogram?" The people around were immediately blown away. Just now they said 20 US dollars per gram, which means 20,000 US dollars per kilogram. How did this become 100 US dollars per kilogram in a blink of an eye? , converted down, the price per gram is not going to drop below 10 cents?

Wang Xiaochen quickly explained: "Don't get me wrong, I'm talking about the ultimate goal proposed by our group. This goal will not be realized until at least 2010. In the short term, our group is unlikely to further expand production capacity, because graphene The production process is very complicated, and the investment in equipment is beyond what we can afford.”

"Then haven't you considered finding some partners to co-produce?" Yoshida Gen asked again.

Wang Xiaochen shook his head: "Not yet. We are not sure how big the demand for graphene is. It is not suitable to find a partner at this time. Also, for our group, there are still many things worth doing , Graphene is only one of our products, so it is impossible for the group to invest too much money in this project."

"That's really a pity." Yoshida Gen said hypocritically, but what he thought in his heart was another sentence: So that's the case, these Chinese people are really too short-sighted.

The scope of graphene's application has been evaluated by Yoshida Yuan several years ago, which is one of the reasons why he persuaded the company to invest heavily in graphene research and development. According to Yoshida Gen’s calculations, if the price of graphene can really drop to $20 per gram, the global annual demand will be at least 20 tons, which is equivalent to a market of $400 million a year. According to Wang Xiaochen, Daqin Group will form a production capacity of about 5 kilograms per day, and its annual output will be less than 2 tons, accounting for only 10% of the entire market. This is strategic short-sightedness.

You must know that as an enterprise that has mastered advanced technology, it is very important to maintain a monopoly position in the market. This will not only enable the enterprise to obtain as much profit as possible, but the most important thing is to squeeze those potential competitors and make itself in the market. Stay in the leading position for some time.

Daqin Group could not correctly assess the size of the market, and even regarded graphene as an ordinary product, and was unwilling to expand production capacity just because of excessive investment, which gave Xinzuka Chemical a chance to counterattack. As long as Xinzuka Chemical can develop its own preparation process in a short period of time, even if the technology is more complicated and the cost is slightly higher than that of Daqin Group, it will have a chance of survival due to the huge gap in the market.

Yoshida Gen believes that as long as Xinzuka Chemical can compete with Daqin Group, the final winner must be Xinzuka Chemical. Daqin Group has worked hard to open the door to graphene, and has painstakingly developed two preparation processes first, which will eventually become the stepping stone of Xinzuka Chemical.

In order not to show his feet, Yoshida Gen didn't say anything, but re-entered the crowd and stopped showing up. However, he thought he was careful, but he didn't know that the mantis catching the cicada and the oriole were behind him, his every move was already being watched by people. After Wang Xiaochen finished answering everyone's questions, he arranged for someone to take the guests to the cafeteria for dinner. He returned to the office by himself, and saw Xu Xiaoqi, the intelligence director of the Daqin Group, waiting for her in the office with a smile.

"Xiaoqi, when did you come?" Wang Xiaochen greeted Xu Xiaoqi affectionately. The other party was not only a middle-level cadre of the group, but also the daughter-in-law of the general manager Ning Zhongying. In charge of the family members, their usual relationship is very close.

Xu Xiaoqi said: "You guys have made such a big commotion, and so many global scholars have come. As an intelligence officer, how can I not join in the fun? When you were having a meeting in the lecture hall, I was already watching from behind. It's just that you and President Qin didn't see me. By the way, sister Xiaochen, do you know the origin of the Japanese who talked to you later?"