Physics and Astronomy Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UMKC)
The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
Items in MOspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
Recent Submissions
-
Resilience, Risk and Protective Factors among Nigerian Youth
(2022)Poverty or low socioeconomic status has been known to negatively impact the educational achievement of children across the world. However, some children have managed to succeed despite the daily challenges they face because ... -
A modeling framework for spatial transmission of Covid-19 in local communities
(2022)COVID-19 is the recent infectious disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Because the transmissibility of the virus is relatively high and the outbreaks remained undetected ... -
A study of carbon and iron charged point defects in gallium nitride: electronic structure implications for high-power photoconductive solid state switch applications
(2021)There is growing demand for high-performance electronics in high volt- age, high current, and high frequency efficiency requirements that current materials (e.g., Si) are not fulfilling. Within the last few years, the ... -
Hydrolysis and aqueous corrosion of silicate and aluminosilicate glasses via ab initio molecular dynamics simulation
(2021)Hydrolysis and aqueous corrosion of glass is a complex and puzzling phenomenon. Although many endeavors have been made to investigate corrosion in glass, it is still an open question with many unanswered fundamental issues. ... -
Moving Mesh Finite Element Method for Time Dependent Convection-Diffusion Problems
(2021)The moving mesh finite element method (MM-FEM) has been a significant force in numerically approximating solutions to differential equations that otherwise exhibit spurious, artificial oscillations. This is especially true ... -
Constraining the Major Merging History of Massive Galaxies: A Comprehensive Analysis of Close Pairs and Tidal Features Using Empirical and Simulated Data
(2021)Major galaxy merging is a fundamental aspect of the hierarchical structure-growth scenario of the universe, and it is theoretical expected to contribute to several key aspects of galaxy evolution. As such, empirically ... -
The Role of Surfaces and Structural Disorder on the Core Level Chemical Shift in Perovskite Solar Cells
(2021)The local electronic environment of atoms near interfaces in thin-film solar cells plays a crucial role in the overall performance. Core electron chemical shifts are sensitive indicators of variation in the local environment ... -
3D modeling and integration of current and future interconnect technologies
(2021)To ensure maximum circuit reliability it is very important to estimate the circuit performance and signal integrity in the circuit design phase. A full phase simulation for performance estimation of a large-scale circuit ... -
Amorphous hydrogenated boron carbide for solid-state direct-conversion thermal neutron detection
(2021)Amorphous hydrogenated boron carbide (a-BC:H) is one of a very limited number of neutron-sensitive materials. It has been studied over the last three decades for solid-state thermal neutron detection due to its high ... -
Challenges and solutions for large-scale integration of emerging technologies
(2021)The semiconductor revolution so far has been primarily driven by the ability to shrink devices and interconnects proportionally (Moore's law) while achieving incremental benefits. In sub-10nm nodes, device scaling reaches ... -
Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition of Boron Carbide for Interconnect Applications
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2018)As the semiconductor industry endeavors to scale integrated circuit dimensions— decreasing layer thicknesses while increasing the aspect ratio of fillable features—the need for novel interconnect materials with highly ... -
Ferroelectric System Dynamics and the Properties of Ferroelectric / Two-Dimensional Electron Gas Heterostructures: a Ginzburg–Landau Study
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2017)Understanding the electronic response of materials to applied electric fields is an outstanding goal in solid-state theory. One aspect of this goal is to accurately predict the electric polarization of certain materials ... -
Enabling Electronic Structure Calculations of High Z Element Containing Materials Using Dirac Relativistic DFT Methods
(2020)Novel properties may be induced in a host material by doping it with high Z elements to alter its underlying electronic states. Presently, no method exists that can accurately capture both large system sizes and the intricate ... -
Sequential Sampling Designs for Estimating Software Reliability
(2020)For any non-trivial system, it is impossible to reach the exact reliability of software due to the complexity, cost, and time required to complete the testing. Instead, a sample of test cases can be used to estimate the ... -
Electronic Structure of Three Center Two Electron Bonds in Boron Rich Materials: A Study of Molecules, Crystals, and Amorphous Solids using the ab initio Orthogonalized Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals Method
(2020)It has been shown that isomers of carborane, α and β rhombohedral boron, α and β tetragonal boron, γ boron, and boron carbide tend to form icosahedral structures. If the icosahedra were formed with pure boron, it has been ... -
Ab Initio Study of Amorphous Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework (A-ZIF) and Pyrophosphate crystals
(2020)Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) are a rapidly emerging class of versatile porous material with many potential applications. Here, we report the construction of an amorphous ZIF (a-ZIF) model from a near-perfect ... -
Modeling HIV-1 Infection in the Brain: The Effect of the Blood-Brain Barrier
(2019)Despite the advancement of antiretroviral therapy (ART), the development of HIV associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) remains a major concern among HIV infected patients. As many ART drugs may fail to penetrate the ... -
Frequency and Field Strength Materials Characterization with Complementary Split-ring Resonators, Coplanar Waveguides, and the Virtual Ground Method
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019)In the radiofrequency bands, measuring the power-dependent complex permittivity and permeability of materials that undergo metal–insulator transitions is a significant challenge which is important for defense and ... -
Implementation of Solution and Solid Sate Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopic Techniques for Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Molecular Species
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019)In this dissertation, spectroscopy has been used to solve a variety of problems in different domains of science. Therefore, each chapter consists of different examples that have been addressed using different concepts ... -
Introduction and application of GEANT4: A comparison of depth-dose
(2019)Geometry ANd Tracking 4 (GEANT4) is an object-oriented C++ based program that uses Monte Carlo methods to simulate the passage of particles through matter. A powerful application, GEANT4, allows the user to define variables ...