# CLIFF: Continual Learning for Incremental Flake Features in 2D Material Identification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17261 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17261/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12877/) (2020)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Efficient Lifelong Learning with A-GEM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00420/) (2018)
- [Dark Experience for General Continual Learning: a Strong, Simple Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07211/) (2020)
- [Large Scale Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13260/) (2019)
- [Learn to Grow: A Continual Structure Learning Framework for Overcoming Catastrophic Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00310/) (2019)
- [Co2L: Contrastive Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14413/) (2021)
- [Using Hindsight to Anchor Past Knowledge in Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08165/) (2020)
- [Memory Efficient Experience Replay for Streaming Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05922/) (2018)
- [Continual Learning of a Mixed Sequence of Similar and Dissimilar Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10017/) (2021)
- [BiMaL: Bijective Maximum Likelihood Approach to Domain Adaptation in Semantic Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.03267/) (2021)
- [FREDOM: Fairness Domain Adaptation Approach to Semantic Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02135/) (2023)
- [Deep-Learning-Based Image Segmentation Integrated with Optical Microscopy for Automatically Searching for Two-Dimensional Materials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12750/) (2019)
- [Fairness Continual Learning Approach to Semantic Scene Understanding in Open-World Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15700/) (2023)
- [Two-Dimensional Quantum Material Identification via Self-Attention and Soft-labeling in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15948/) (2022)
- [Quantum Vision Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09907/) (2023)
- [FALCON: Fairness Learning via Contrastive Attention Approach to Continual Semantic Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15965/) (2023)
- [OTAdapt: Optimal Transport-based Approach For Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10738/) (2022)
- [Self-supervised Domain Adaptation in Crowd Counting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03431/) (2022)
- [CONDA: Continual Unsupervised Domain Adaptation Learning in Visual Perception for Self-Driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00621/) (2022)
- [Quantum Visual Feature Encoding Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19725/) (2024)
- [Diffusion-Inspired Quantum Noise Mitigation in Parameterized Quantum Circuits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00843/) (2024)
- [Defining Quantum Neural Networks via Quantum Time Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10912/) (2019)
- [Hierarchical Quantum Control Gates for Functional MRI Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03596/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [OpenQlaw: An Agentic AI Assistant for Analysis of 2D Quantum Materials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17043/) (2026)
- [QuPAINT: Physics-Aware Multimodal Reasoning for Quantum Material Characterization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12202/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Identifying quantum flakes is crucial for scalable quantum hardware; however, automated layer classification from optical microscopy remains challenging due to substantial appearance shifts across different materials. This paper proposes a new Continual-Learning Framework for Flake Layer Classification (CLIFF). To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first systematic study of continual learning in two-dimensional (2D) materials. The proposed framework enables the model to distinguish materials and their physical and optical properties by freezing the backbone and base head, which are trained on a reference material. For each new material, it learns a material-specific prompt, embedding, and a delta head. A prompt pool and a cosine-similarity gate modulate features and compute material-specific corrections. Additionally, memory replay with knowledge distillation is incorporated. CLIFF achieves competitive accuracy with significantly lower forgetting than naive fine-tuning and a prompt-based baseline.