\chapter*{Declaration}
\thispagestyle{empty}
{I declare that this thesis contains less than 40 pages, excluding: the title page, this declaration, acknowledgements, the table of contents, and references.}
\chapter*{Acknowledgments}


I am extremely grateful for the support offered to me by many individuals during this project. There aren't many synonyms for ``Thanks'', so I'm afraid this section may be a little repetitive.

Thanks to my supervisors Prof Sergey Samarin and W/Prof Jim Williams for envisioning the project, and their invaluable support throughout the year. I would also like to thank staff members at CAMSP for assisting with the supervision of this project. In particular I am extremely grateful for the help and advice given by Dr Paul Gualiardo during the construction and testing of the Total Current Spectroscopy experiment.

Thanks to CMCA for producing the SEM images which proved a invaluable aid for discussing the structure of the metallic-black films. Thanks to Jeremy Hughes for lending me some samples for ellipsometric analysis (even though I did not get around to studying those samples). I would also like to endorse the team at J.A Woolam, who provided replacement pins for the ellipsometer alignment detector at no charge after one of the original pins became mysteriously damaged. 

Congratulations to Jeremy Hughes who successfully predicted that the emission current of the electron gun was varying periodically less than a quarter of the way through the first period. Condolences to Alexander Mazur, whose theory that the vacuum chamber contained a pulsar proved unfounded. 

Thanks to all my family and friends for their support and for continuing to put up with my slow descent into madness during the last 12 months. 

Finally, perhaps as a result of the aforementioned madness,  I would also like to thank the various pieces of equipment and inanimate objects which have been crucial to the success of this project. This includes the ellipsometer, the ADC/DAC box, my laptop computer ``Cerberus'', and the two electrometers that I relied upon so heavily. Rest in peace Keithly 610B. Your death was not in vain.

