News on China's scientific and technological development.

SanWenYu said:

Chinese researchers made new composites that is excellent at load bearing and thermal insulating at the same time. It has been used as "rigid thermal insulation in various advanced engines."

Published paper in English:

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News release in Chinese:

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for reference on how crazy this material is, it has compressive strength 80 MPa which sounds small compared to say, stainless (300 MPa) but stainless has 12x higher density. but this material can withstand 1800+C. that means even steel melts. not weakens, but outright melts. so this is actually much stronger than stainless steel per unit mass while retaining its strength at a temperature where stainless steel is a puddle of molten metal.

in addition, notice they have a M8 thread in a plate, and are able to shape it arbitrarily into curves and holed disks. forming a ceramic material into arbitrary shapes (like giving it threads) is not trivial. That's because the stress of threading often causes fractures to propagate in ceramics, and most ceramic materials through-bolt fasteners which force a flanged connection, and is not as easy to work with to minimize exposed surfaces. Ceramics for high temperature purposes can't accept a braze, solder or glue for obvious reasons, bolting is the only way to go.

Technology 15:01, 25-May-2022

Supercomputing lab in China uses quantum technology to predict weather

China's supercomputing innovation center Zhejiang Lab has applied its supercomputing technology to analyze weather data with more precise results as the country grows its advanced technologies with an aim to build a quintillion-scale supercomputing application ecology.

Founded in 2017, the lab is a research institute jointly built by the Zhejiang provincial government, Zhejiang University and China's tech firm Alibaba Group.

Located in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, young researchers have explored new areas and made advanced achievements in supercomputing technology at Zhejiang Lab.

The researchers analyzed an immense amount of meteorological data about temperature, humidity, wind power and satellite cloud pictures in the Yangtze River Delta as the province has entered a flood season during which weather forecast is crucial to help prevent potential danger and economic cost.

"The resolution of ordinary weather forecasts is calculated in 10 kilometers, but our resolution is one kilometer. That is to say, the precision of our forecast has seen a tenfold increase," said Qin Yi, an engineering expert at Zhejiang Lab.

In recent years, numerous data and application scenarios have brought about lots of challenges to traditional computing. The research center for intelligent supercomputing as one of the centers of Zhejiang Lab was founded in April 2021, as a part of the national strategy in supercomputing technology boost.

The researchers at the center had to start on their own as the supercomputing remains an emerging discipline in the world with many systematic theories to be improved. The network, basic facilities and supercomputing platforms have been built up after repeated designs and tests.

In 2019, global scientists developed a quantum computer that could complete a calculation in 200 seconds which was supposed to take 10,000 years for a traditional supercomputer to complete. Such achievement inspired the researchers of Zhejiang Lab to push forward their supercomputing technology.

"We hope to find a new way to integrate the computing capacity of artificial intelligence on the basis of supercomputers, so as to realize a simulated application of quantum computing," Qin said.

The young researchers with the lab developed a quantum simulator after four months of efforts. Installed with the simulator, the new generation of Sunway supercomputers could finish the "10,000-year calculation" in 304 seconds. Then they shortened the time to 150 seconds.

The new exascale Sunway system to simulate quantum circuits won the 2021 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Gordon Bell Prize.

Currently, the young researchers are further deepening the development of an intelligent supercomputing system and the construction of a supercomputing network platform.

"Now we are not only building an intelligent supercomputing system, but also developing supercomputing network standards so as to fully share and effectively arrange the computing resources among different supercomputing centers, and support and serve more fields," Qin said.

High performance InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche diode using DBR-metal reflector and backside micro-lens​

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InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche diodes have proven to be the most practical solution for quantum key distribution and long-distance 3-D imaging. In this paper, to further improve the device performance, a new reflector involving the metal layer and SiO2/ TiO2 distributed Bragg reflector has been applied together with a micro-lens to increase the absorption efficiency by 58%. The normalized dark count rate is 127 Hz, 361 Hz, and 665 Hz for 10%, 20%, 30% photon detection efficiency, respectively, when it is operated under the gated mode with a pulse repetition rate of 50 MHz and pulse width of 1 ns at 233 K temperature. The normalized dark count rate is nearly an order of magnitude lower than commercial devices at 233 K, reflecting the high performance of the proposed near-infrared single-photon detectors.

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近日，中国科学技术大学光学与光学工程系教授王亮课题组设计并制备的InGaAs（砷化铟镓）单光子探测器芯片取得重要进展。

前述团队通过设计金属—分布式布拉格反射器优化单光子探测器芯片的光学性能，完成低本征暗计数的单光子探测器芯片的全自主化设计与制备，实现了单光子探测器芯片的全国产化，为解决我国前沿科技问题迈进了重要一步。相关成果在线发表于电子工程技术领域期刊Journal of Lightwave Technology。

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基于InGaAs材料的半导体单光子雪崩二极管(SPAD)具有单光子级别的高灵敏度、短波红外波段的人眼安全、大气窗口波段低损耗、穿透雾霾、低功耗、小尺寸、易于集成等优秀特点。

前述优点使SPAD在量子信息技术、主被动的焦平面探测器、城市测绘、激光雷达等多个领域均发挥着重要作用，具有民用、商用以及军用价值。

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团队在SPAD器件结构的基础上，提出并设计了新型的宽谱（全光通信波段）全反射镜，即金属—分布式布拉格反射镜，用以提升SPAD芯片的光电吸收效率。其制备的12μm（微米）窗口的低暗计数SPAD，在温度233K（开氏度）及10%的探测效率下具有127Hz（赫兹）的超低本征暗计数，比国外同类产品低一个量级，拥有更优的器件性能，此芯片可满足量子通信等应用的单光子探测使用需求，并可替代进口器件。

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Chinese scientists make breakthrough harvesting energy from sun, outer space cooling



Chinese researchers have developed a new type of material to absorb heat from the sun during the day and emit energy to outer space to harvest cooling at night in a novel approach for harvesting renewable energy, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

The results of their study were published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The breakthrough finding is in harvesting "heat and cool" in a single structure, saving space and reducing costs, according to Pei Gang and Zou Chongwen, leading scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China.




The paper published online in PNAS.

The base of the coating material is vanadium dioxide (VO2) film and its switch from heating to cooling mode throughout a 24-hour day-night cycle creates no extra energy costs, said the Chinese scientists.

With self-adaptability properties, the VO2 film is in a metallic phase and can be heated to 170 degrees Celsius above ambient temperature under sunshine, while in darkness, the VO2 film transforms into an insulator and can be cooled to 20 degrees Celsius below ambient temperature.




With self-adaptability properties, the VO2 film is in a metallic phase and can be heated to 170 degrees Celsius above ambient temperature under sunshine, while in darkness, the VO2 film transforms into an insulator and can be cooled to 20 degrees Celsius below ambient temperature. /University of Science and Technology of China

The material could be applied to fields including energy conservation in buildings, cooling photovoltaic systems, thermoelectrics and energy supply in outer space, according to Pei.
The issue facing the use of the material is high costs. However, substitute materials with similar techniques but lower efficiency are close to mass production.

Chinese science development would face the same challenge in the event of sanctions，so it is important to be prepared

The sanctions dealt a heavy blow to Russian science. Skoltech Rector Alexander Kuleshov spoke about difficult prospects​

It also became difficult to publish abroad​

Rector of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Kuleshov, confirmed that the sanctions against Russia dealt a heavy blow to Russian science.

He calls the lack of deliveries of modern scientific equipment to the Russian Federation and problems with servicing the existing one a disaster.

Alexander Kuleshov notes that at the moment it is impossible to resolve the issue of supplying large equipment necessary for scientific work, because "this is not a mass product that can be bought on the market."

As for serious equipment, from computing clusters to transmission microscopes, I don't know what to do with it. This is a huge problem. And it doesn't just concern us. Here is the Christofari cluster, one of the top 50 most powerful supercomputers in the world, owned by Sberbank. Magnificent building. But how to support it now - I do not understand. The worst thing is that we don't have our own scientific instrumentation, we don't have our own computer technology, we don't have microelectronics.

Alexander Kuleshov​

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It has also become difficult to publish in foreign scientific publications: “Publishing is a problem. A reviewer who receives a scientific article may have personal likes and dislikes, he may be influenced by anti-Russian sentiments, even if the article reaches him anonymously, because he can guess from the text and links that it is from Russia.”

For the past decades, we have lived in the paradigm "we have oil and gas, and we will buy the rest." This approach played a very cruel joke with us. It is necessary to radically change everything, and the realization of this, it seems, has come.

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I wonder how much this method of growing livestock feed costs compared to the traditional way.

tonyget said:

Chinese science development would face the same challenge in the event of sanctions，so it is important to be prepared

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The sanctions dealt a heavy blow to Russian science. Skoltech Rector Alexander Kuleshov spoke about difficult prospects​

It also became difficult to publish abroad​

Rector of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Kuleshov, confirmed that the sanctions against Russia dealt a heavy blow to Russian science.

He calls the lack of deliveries of modern scientific equipment to the Russian Federation and problems with servicing the existing one a disaster.

Alexander Kuleshov notes that at the moment it is impossible to resolve the issue of supplying large equipment necessary for scientific work, because "this is not a mass product that can be bought on the market."

It has also become difficult to publish in foreign scientific publications: “Publishing is a problem. A reviewer who receives a scientific article may have personal likes and dislikes, he may be influenced by anti-Russian sentiments, even if the article reaches him anonymously, because he can guess from the text and links that it is from Russia.”

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Chinese OEMs often make replacement parts for many scientific instruments. There is huge money to be made in China for OEM replacement of scientific instruments components.

Chinese companies do make electron microscopes, gas chromatographs, MRI machines, supercomputers, etc. It is just that Russians used to think only western instruments were good, partially due to racism. Indeed many peoples don't even trust Japanese scientific instrument manufacturers like Shimadzu, much less Chinese.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Chinese OEMs often make replacement parts for many scientific instruments. There is huge money to be made in China for OEM replacement of scientific instruments components.

Chinese companies do make electron microscopes, gas chromatographs, MRI machines, supercomputers, etc. It is just that Russians used to think only western instruments were good, partially due to racism. Indeed many peoples don't even trust Japanese scientific instrument manufacturers like Shimadzu, much less Chinese.

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I still see Chinese labs using Western instruments. Hate to see sanctions at the most critical time.

t2contra said:

I still see Chinese labs using Western instruments. Hate to see sanctions at the most critical time.

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Yep you need them to publish cutting edge research and labs have money. But there's domestic or even Japanese alternatives available for many western instruments, easily usable for industrial R&D purposes.

SEMs:


Elemental analysis (ICP-OES, ICP-MS, GD-OES):


FPI Photonics also makes industrial instrumentation like tunable diode laser spectrometers for gas phase analysis.

Lab supplies: Hawach.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Chinese companies do make electron microscopes, gas chromatographs, MRI machines, supercomputers, etc. It is just that Russians used to think only western instruments were good, partially due to racism. Indeed many peoples don't even trust Japanese scientific instrument manufacturers like Shimadzu, much less Chinese.

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Russia can make superconducting magnets. So they could make an MRI machine if they wanted to. Their major issue is the semiconductors really.