Integrating Data Mining and Natural Language Processing to Construct a Melting Point Database for Organometallic Compounds.

As semiconductor devices are miniaturized, the importance of atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology is growing. When designing ALD precursors, it is important to consider the melting point, because the precursors should have melting points lower than the process temperature. However, obtaining melting point data is challenging due to experimental sensitivity and high computational costs. As a result, a comprehensive and well-organized database for the melting point of the OMCs has not been fully reported yet. Therefore, in this study, we constructed a database of melting points for 1,845 OMCs, including 58 metal and 6 metalloid elements. The database contains CAS numbers, molecular formulas, and structural information and was constructed through automatic extraction and systematic curation. The melting point information was extracted using two methods: 1) 1,434 materials from 11 chemical vendor databases and 2) 411 materials identified through natural language processing (NLP) techniques with an accuracy of 86.3%, based on 2,096 scientific papers published over the past 29 years. In our database, the OMCs contain up to around 250 atoms and have melting points that range from -170 to 1610 °C. The main source is the Chemsrc database, accounting for 607 materials (32.9%), and Fe is the most common central metal or metalloid element (15.0%), followed by Si (11.6%) and B (6.7%). To validate the utilization of the constructed database, a multimodal neural network model was developed integrating graph-based and feature-based information as descriptors to predict the melting points of the OMCs but moderate performance. We believe the current approach reduces the time and cost associated with hand-operated data collection and processing, contributing to effective screening of potentially promising ALD precursors and providing crucial information for the advancement of the semiconductor industry.

Liquid-like properties of cyclopentadienyl complexes of barium: molecular dynamics simulations of nanoscale droplets.

Cyclopentadienyl complexes of barium have great utility in materials science and engineering, in particular, as precursors in the atomic layer deposition processes, which are required to be fluidic as well as thermally stable and volatile. Here, we investigated the liquid-like properties of cyclopentadienyl barium complexes including (Me5C5)2Ba, (tBu3C5H2)2Ba, (iPr4C5H)2Ba, (iPr5C5)2Ba, and [(SiMe3)3C5H2]2Ba, using molecular dynamics simulations of nanoscale droplets. The compounds were modeled using a recently developed generic force field, GFN-FF. Nanoscale droplets with about 5.0 nm diameters were formed by aggregating 96 molecules of each compound. Simulation results reveal that substituting methyl groups of (Me5C5)2Ba with other alkyl and silyl moieties has a non-negligible effect on the intra- and intermolecular structure and dynamics. In particular, in contrast to more flexible (Me5C5)2Ba, the substitution with five iso-propyl groups to form (iPr5C5)2Ba adds rigidity to the complex with restricted orientational fluctuations for two cyclopentadienyl ligands and arranges molecules parallel to each other with greater probability. In addition, comparison between (tBu3C5H2)2Ba, with three tert-butyl groups, and its silyl analogue, [(SiMe3)3C5H2]2Ba, reveals that intermolecular interactions between the molecules with silyl groups are softer than those with tert-butyl groups and result in broader radial distribution functions, whereas the dynamic properties are similar for both compounds. This work suggests that molecular dynamics simulations contribute to molecular-level understanding of the effect of chemical substitution in organometallic compounds on the intra- and intermolecular properties of molecular liquids.

Characterization of Mechanical Degradation in Perfluoropolyether Film for Its Application to Antifingerprint Coatings.

Enhancing the mechanical durability of antifingerprint films is critical for its industrial application on touch-screen devices to withstand friction damage from repeated rubbing in daily usage. Using reactive molecular dynamics simulations, we herein implement adhesion, mechanical, and deposition tests to investigate two durability-determining factors: intrachain and interchain strength, which affect the structural stability of the antifingerprint film (perfluoropolyether) on silica. From the intrachain perspective, it is found that the Si-C bond in the polymer chain is the weakest, and therefore prone to dissociation and potentially forming a C-O bond. This behavior is demonstrated consistently, regardless of the cross-linking density between polymer chains. For the interchain interaction, increasing the chain length enhances the mechanical properties of the film. Furthermore, the chain deposition test, mimicking the experimental coating process, demonstrates that placing shorter chains first to the surface of silica and then depositing longer chains is an ideal way to improve the interchain interaction in the film structure. The current study reveals a clear pathway to optimize the configuration of the polymer chain as well as its film structure to prolong the product life of the coated antifingerprint film.

Clinical evaluation of micro-scale chip-based PCR system for rapid detection of hepatitis B virus.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is widely used to amplify a small amount of DNA in samples for genetic analysis. Rapid and accurate amplification is prerequisite for broad applications including molecular diagnostics of diseases, food safety, and biological warfare tests. We have developed a rapid real-time micro-scale chip-based PCR system, which consists of six individual thermal cycling modules capable of independent control of PCR protocols. The PCR volume is 1 microl and it takes less than 20 min to complete 40 thermal cycles. To test utility of a chip-based PCR system as a molecular diagnostic device, we have conducted the first large-scale clinical evaluation study. Three independent clinical evaluation studies (n = 563) for screening the hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, the most popular social epidemic disease in Asia, showed an excellent sensitivity, e.g. 94%, and specificity, e.g. 93%, demonstrating micro-scale chip-based PCR can be applied in molecular diagnostics.