The link between anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, and concomitantly increasing global temperatures is established and accepted. The use of aqueous ammonia, to capture CO2 and produce an inexpensive nitrogen fertilizer, ammonium bicarbonate (ABC), is believed to be a feasible approach to CO2 sequestration. Due to the varying concentrations of reactants and varying reaction conditions, different ammonia-carbon compounds may be produced. ABC is the ideal product for maximizing NH3 utilization in CO2 capture; therefore, identification and quantification of ABC in the reaction products is mandatory. Various analytical techniques were used to distinguish and quantify the ABC. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy can only be used to distinguish ammonium carbamate, and. X-ray diffraction can be used to qualitatively distinguish ABC from the other possible products of the CO2 capture reaction. Carbon-hydrogen-nitrogen elemental analysis and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy were used to quantify ABC, with both techniques giving +/-5% agreement for ABC concentrations for 8 of 13 samples from a bench-scale aqueous ammonia CO2 scrubbing system. An additional 3 of the 13 samples were within +/-12%. Results indicate that NIR will be an ideal tool for real-time, on-line measurements of ABC in a full-scale aqueous ammonia CO2 scrubber. The ABC in 11 samples from the bench-scale scrubber at Western Kentucky University was determined by these techniques and assessed to have very good quality as a fertilizer in accordance with GB-3559-92, the Agricultural Ammonium Bicarbonate National Standard of China.

The area selective growth of polymers and their use as inhibiting layers for inorganic film depositions may provide a valuable self-aligned process for fabrication. Polynorbornene (PNB) thin films were grown from surface-bound initiators and show inhibitory properties against the atomic layer deposition (ALD) of ZnO and TiO2. Area selective control of the polymerization was achieved through the synthesis of initiators that incorporate surface-binding ligands, enabling their selective attachment to metal oxide features versus silicon dielectrics, which were then used to initiate surface polymerizations. The subsequent use of these films in an ALD process enabled the area selective deposition (ASD) of up to 39 nm of ZnO. In addition, polymer thickness was found to play a key role, where films that underwent longer polymerization times were more effective at inhibiting higher numbers of ALD cycles. Finally, while the ASD of a TiO2 film was not achieved despite blanket studies showing inhibition, the ALD deposition on polymer regions of a patterned film produced a different quality metal oxide and therefore altered its etch resistance. This property was exploited in the area selective etch of a metal feature. This demonstration of an area selective surface-grown polymer to enable ASD and selective etch has implications for the fabrication of both micro- and nanoscale features and surfaces.

Titanium nitride-carbide (TiNC, as deposited) XPS spectraAlthough exposure to ambient conditions introduces substantial amount of oxygen and organic carbon in the film (therefore making the analysis difficult), valuable information can be extracted from the N 1s spectra, shown in Fig. 1 in the manuscript. Previous experiments in situ have assigned sets of components for N, C and Ti in nitride-based films, as shown in this table : Assignments of XPS components for in situ analysis of TiC X N Y films Components Janovska