Arc Reactor Research, Quantum Tunneling Amplification

It had been quite some time since he had found those Arc Reactors from Ivan.

Shimizu had also spent a long time studying those Arc Reactors.

Yet even now, he had been unable to crack the technology required to manufacture an Arc Reactor based on the few samples in his possession.

It was purely a generational gap in technology.

Shimizu’s attainments in mechanical physics were already quite high. While he was still far behind a genius ahead of his time like Tony Stark, the knowledge and technology he had acquired through various channels undoubtedly surpassed those of most scientists.

Over the past few months, Shimizu had taken over most of Norman Osborn’s research achievements after his death. Even with Osborn’s entire technological foundation supporting him, he still could not replicate the Arc Reactor.

Aside from Ivan, who had inherited the knowledge from his family—his father had assisted Howard Stark in developing the Arc Reactor—there were hardly many people in the entire Marvel World who could crack that little gadget Tony Stark had made in a cave out of dismantled missiles.

But it was not as though he had gained nothing.

He had already roughly figured out most of the principles behind how the Arc Reactor operated. Even if current technology could not put those principles into practice, the byproducts of his research process alone were valuable enough.

Under normal circumstances, achieving nuclear fusion required extremely demanding conditions.

Nuclear fusion in nature, such as in the Sun, occurred naturally under high temperatures and high pressure.

Since Earth could not produce the high-pressure conditions found in the Sun, artificially created nuclear fusion basically relied on absolute high temperatures—the classic example being the hydrogen bomb, which was detonated by the immense heat generated from an atomic bomb explosion.

Then there was the Tokamak Device, where internal temperatures could reach 100 to 150 million degrees Celsius. Its principle was to use induced currents, high-energy particle injection, and electromagnetic waves at specific frequencies to achieve radio-frequency heating, raising the internal plasma to that level while using magnetic fields to control the plasma.

No matter how one put it, whether high temperature or high pressure, the goal was to generate enough enormous energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between atomic nuclei—the Coulomb barrier.

Yet Howard Stark had, as early as the last century, developed a black technology among black technologies.

Quantum Tunneling Amplification.

In classical physics, if a particle did not have enough energy to cross a barrier, it would be bounced back. But the microscopic world did not work that way.

At microscopic scales, particles exhibited wave-like properties. Their wave functions decayed exponentially within the barrier region, but never completely dropped to zero. Thus, there was a certain probability that a particle could "tunnel" through the barrier and appear on the other side.

That was the quantum tunneling effect.

Howard Stark had integrated numerous methods to amplify the quantum tunneling effect, allowing particles to pass through the Coulomb barrier more easily and achieve nuclear fusion.

For instance, muon-catalyzed fusion, or using an ultra-intense laser field to instantaneously reduce the width of the barrier.

Those were all extremely advanced technologies.

But the most advanced, most important, and most absurd-sounding one was the technique Howard Stark had developed to use metal lattices to reduce the barrier.

By using chemical methods to fill metal lattices with hydrogen atoms, he helped the hydrogen atoms approach the distance required for nuclear reactions, lowered the reaction barrier between hydrogen atoms, and greatly amplified the quantum tunneling effect of hydrogen and its isotopes—enough to easily produce cold nuclear fusion at room temperature, and with extreme safety.

Howard Stark had studied many metallic materials. He had even used Vibranium in his research. In the end, he concluded that palladium’s metal lattice was the most suitable.

It was itself an exceptionally fine hydrogen storage material.

That also answered one of Shimizu’s questions.

Why was the Arc Reactor’s output so absurdly high, yet its endurance so short?

Because its cold nuclear fusion relied on hydrogen atoms and their isotopes filled within palladium, and the quantity of hydrogen atoms was severely limited.

Of course, Howard Stark had also proposed a solution. He had theorized the existence of an isotope of palladium, but due to the limitations of his era, he had left its creation to later generations.

Building on that foundation, Tony Stark had added many more things. Not only had he created that palladium isotope, but he had also successfully miniaturized the reactor.

But understanding the principles was one thing. Shimizu could not fill hydrogen atoms into palladium’s metal lattice in the correct manner.

He had tried everything, from the simplest high-temperature, high-pressure treatment to electrochemical loading.

He could load in small amounts of hydrogen atoms, but the density of hydrogen atoms within a single unit cell was not high enough. It was completely incapable of achieving the effect he wanted.

But that did not mean he had gained nothing.

A single piece of advice from Tony Stark had prompted Ivan to increase the rotational speed of the energy output system, creating an extremely efficient miniature energy conversion system.

As supporting technology for the Arc Reactor, Shimizu could directly apply it to his armor and puppets, reducing Chakra consumption while amplifying attacks, increasing flight speed, and greatly improving energy efficiency.

"Watos, put these things away and return them to their original places. Archive Palladium-Hydrogen Combination Plan No. 17."

Shimizu rubbed his eyes tiredly and stretched.

"OK, Sir."

A cold synthetic electronic voice came from the speaker above Shimizu’s head.

Watos, or watos.

It was the result of Shimizu reverse-engineering Lex Luthor’s lexos with Cisco and Victor’s help.

As an Artificial Intelligence, Watos was still in a relatively primitive form. Even though Shimizu had fed it a vast amount of training material and equipped an entire room of servers to provide computing power, the thing would occasionally glitch out, misunderstand Shimizu’s intentions, and turn into an artificially stupid intelligence.

But in most situations, Watos was quite useful. At the very least, it could provide Shimizu with some assistance in scientific research.

"Sir, you have a missed call. It was from Mr. Manken thirty minutes ago. You instructed me to decline it at the time."

"Manken? Call him back. And notify George to bring me a cup of coffee."

Shimizu yawned tiredly and sat down in his chair.

The prolonged, high-intensity mental work had left him somewhat exhausted.

"Yes, sir."

Just a few seconds later, the sound of the call connecting came from the speaker above Shimizu’s head.

"Wade, you finally answered."

Manken sounded even more exhausted.

"What is it?"

"Connors’s regenerative serum has succeeded, but a lot of people have their eyes on it. Through Connors, I’ve already rooted out more than a dozen spies hidden within the company."

"Are the people behind those spies troublesome?"