"Old Qiu, what's going on?"
Xu Yun had just returned to the lab when he asked Qiu Sheng, who was holding a test tube:
"It's only been a little over an hour, right? The substitution reaction is already complete?"
"That's right. Hang on while I put this thing away."
At that, Qiu Sheng carefully set down the test tube, walked over to another table, picked up a printed report, and handed it to Xu Yun:
"To be precise, it took an hour and twenty-seven minutes. The reactivity of 5-epoxy-1-hexadecyne seems quite a bit higher than we expected."
Xu Yun took the report, glanced through it, and nodded:
"This curve... It looks like the temperature setting must be the issue. I'd guess it has something to do with me telling Xiao Zhao to raise the temperature earlier.
Old Qiu, chemistry isn't my specialty. Is there really such a big difference in the reactivity of 5-epoxy-1-hexadecyne at 180 degrees versus 170?"
Qiu Sheng pondered for a moment, then shook his head:
"I know 5-epoxy-1-dodecyne, but when it comes to hexadecyne, even our understanding of it here in China seems rather limited.
Temperatures of 180 and 170 degrees are both pretty common, but add a substitution reaction into the mix, and it's hard to say. After all, more research on these carbon chains is being done in materials science."
Xu Yun nodded thoughtfully and said nothing more.
Carbyne refers to chains formed by carbon atoms clustered together, with the atoms connected by double bonds or alternating single and triple bonds.
Carbyne had been shown to be over 200 times stronger than steel and twice as strong as graphene in tensile strength. It was considered the toughest material in the world, with a strength forty times that of diamond.
It had been proposed in