Acknowledgements

There are many people that have earned my gratitude for their contribution to my time in graduate school. The research into gas-surface interactions presented here has been a truly collaborative effort. I would like to thank Dr. Ioana Cozmuta, who initial work and support helped start this line of research. The assistance of Professor Adri van Duin and his student Sriram Srinivasan with the ReaxFF potential was invaluable in troubleshooting problems with the potential and developing a new version of the potential specific to our needs. I would like to thank Professor Donald Truhlar and his group members Anant Kulkarni, Hannah Leverentz, Sijie Luo, Ruben Meana-Pañeda, and Yuliya Paukku for their efforts carrying out electronic structure calculations and valuable feedback. I would also like to thank my fellow group members Chonglin Zhang and Paolo Valentini for their continuing assistance with Molecular Dynamics and Direct Simulation Monte Carlo simulations and helpful discussions. Finally, I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Tom Schwartzentruber, for his support, encouragement, and feedback over my five years at the University of Minnesota.