Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, Materials Science Laboratory.
Standing beside an optical microscope, Lu Zhou gently turned the fine-focus knob as he observed the Carbon Nanotube Fiber on the slide.
After roughly four or five minutes, Lu Zhou pulled his eyes away from the eyepiece and looked at Yang Xu, who stood nearby.
"Is there no way to make them any longer?"
Yang Xu shook his head.
"This is the longest they can be made."
Based on the data observed under the microscope, the shortest samples were only 5–10 μm long. The longer ones could reach 2 mm, but there were only a handful of them.
What was despairing was that even the Carbon Nanotube samples that had grown to 2 mm looked like a pile of unevenly shaved beard stubble beside the smooth, hairlike Carbon Nanotube threads on that piece of fabric...
Lu Zhou stroked his chin in thought for a while before speaking.
"...What about the directional growth technology used for the SG-1 superconducting material? Have you tried it?"
"I've tried every method you could think of," Yang Xu said, shaking his head. "The pore size of these high-tensile-strength Carbon Nanotubes is much smaller than that of the SG-1 material. It's difficult to synthesize them through directional growth... And even if it could be done that way, wouldn't the cost be hard to accept?"
It would have been fine if it were a superconducting material. Such materials were used in cutting-edge fields to begin with, so a higher price was acceptable as long as the required quantity was small. But pouring such enormous costs into a mere tensile material would have been unnecessary.
Staring at the microscope slide with a complicated expression, Lu Zhou still asked unwillingly, "You really have no leads at all?"
"That's not quite true.