arXiv subjects

Jinwen Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Jinwen Liu.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

MineTRACE: An Evidence-Grounded Interactive Reasoning System for Mineral Prospectivity

Mineral exploration requires integrating heterogeneous geochemical, geophysical, and geological evidence, yet existing prospectivity systems often provide only opaque scores or heatmaps. We present MineTRACE, a web-based system for evidence-grounded exploration of eight commodities: Cu, Au, Ni, W, Sn, Co, Ta, and Mn. Users can explore prospectivity maps, query locations or regions, inspect supporting evidence, and interact through natural language. A transparent expert tree, informed by geological knowledge and known deposits, combines multi-source evidence into interpretable prospectivity scores. For a new location, the conversational assistant retrieves the score and supporting evidence from the analysis pipeline and presents them in natural language. The scorer achieves spatial AUC values of up to 0.917 across different test scenarios, while end-to-end evaluation assesses query accuracy and response grounding. MineTRACE makes public geoscience data easier to access, interpret, and verify, supporting more efficient and transparent mineral exploration.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

High Thermal Conductivity of Back-End-of-Line Compatible Diamond Films

Back-end-of-line (BEOL) thermal management requires electrically insulating heat-spreading dielectric that can be integrated within thermal budgets below 400 C. Here, we report polycrystalline diamond films grown directly on Si at a substrate temperature below 400C. Two films with average thickness of 760 and 1000 nm were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR). Raman spectra show a sharp diamond peak with minor signatures of non-diamond carbon, while SEM reveals lateral growth and large grain size. Temperature dependent TDTR measurements were performed from room temperature to 100C. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the sensitivity of cross-plane thermal conductivity is comparative to the in-plane thermal conductivity. Accordingly, the films were analyzed using an isotropic thermal model by considering the nearly-isotropic grain structure, yielding room temperature effective thermal conductivity of 73 and 86 W m-1 K-1, respectively. These values are about two orders of magnitude higher than those of conventional dielectric materials and demonstrate the potential of diamond films grown at low temperatures as dielectric heat-spreading layers.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

High Thermal Conductivity in Back-End-of-Line Compatible AlN Thin Films

With thermal issues becoming a major challenge to the development of integrated circuits (ICs), high-thermal-conductivity (high-TC) materials are gaining interest from both the industry and academia, especially for high-density back-end-of-line (BEOL) structures. Aluminum nitride (AlN) is an insulating material with high TC, suitable for thermal management in electronic devices. Furthermore, polycrystalline AlN thin films can be deposited at BEOL-compatible low temperatures (lower than 400 C) while retaining relatively high TC, rendering AlN a promising candidate for BEOL heat dissipation. Still, AlN deposition should aim at achieving high TC on a variety of substrates used in IC processes. In this work, we obtained 600- and 1200-nm BEOL-compatible AlN thin film samples on Si, SiO, SiN, and Al2O3 substrates for structural and thermal characterizations. Specifically, time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) measurements revealed consistently high TC (higher than 45 W m-1 K-1) on different substrates. Moreover, finite element analysis (FEA) simulations of AlN capped on top of an indium-tin-oxide (ITO) transistor showed a reduction of up to 44% in peak device temperature. Our work provided experimental and calculational evidence for the practicality of leveraging AlN as a high-TC, BEOL-compatible heat spreader material.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Ion Implantation Enhanced Nucleation Facilitates Heat Transport across Atomically-Sharp Semiconductor Interfaces

Overheating is a critical bottleneck limiting the performance and reliability of next-generation high-power and high-frequency electronics. Interfacial thermal resistance constitutes a significant portion of the total thermal resistance. In this study, we report an ultrahigh thermal boundary conductance (TBC) of approximately 800 MW/m2-K at the atomically-sharp AlN-SiC interface, achieved through an ion implantation-enhanced nucleation epitaxy technique. This value is among the highest TBC values reported for semiconductor interfaces, confirmed by structural characterizations which show an ultrahigh-quality interface. Atomistic Green Function calculations reveal that elastic phonon transmission dominates the interface, with nearly half of the acoustic modes (0-15 THz) exhibiting near-unity transmission due to the atomically sharp structure. Furthermore, using high-energy-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy, we probe vibrational properties with nanometer spatial resolution and identify unique interfacial phonon modes connecting the mismatched phonon spectra, confirmed by molecular dynamics simulations. The ultrahigh TBC is attributed to both the high elastic phonon transmission due to the high quality interfaces and the inelastic phonon scattering channel due to interfacial phonon modes. These findings not only advance the fundamental understanding of interfacial thermal transport but also provide a pathway for effective thermal management in emerging electronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗