I would like to thank the following companies and individuals, without whom, this project would have been a great deal harder.
People.At the University of Salford...
Professor Martyn Pemble, my supervisor who kindly stepped in when my original supervisor had to withdraw due to ill health.
Professor Keith Ross without whom the neutron scattering work would mean a lot less than it does and for providing time on the microbalance.
Dr. Adrian Taylor for proof reading
Dr. Heather Yates and Miss Deborah Whitehead for supplying me with the opals
Dr. Trevor Crowley, my original supervisor and without whom, this project would not have been.
Not at University of Salford...
Mr Ian Jobes for proof reading.
Dr. R. Heenan, Rutherford Appleton Labs for helping me setup and operate the LOQ equipment and backup post RAL on processing the data.
Miss Ann Marie Moran, assisting with the early work at Hiden.
Companies.
Acorn Computers. Sadly, the disappeared in 1998 and was broken up and sold. Fortunately, their machines and OS live on.
RiscStation UK. Supplying computers and discounts on various pieces of software and hardware. Also for the loan of equipment.
Clares Micro Supplies. Most of the graphing and some of the spreadsheet work was performed on software supplied by them (Schema2 and Plot)
Abacus Training. Supplier of PipeDream4 - probably the most powerful and flexible spreadsheet I've ever had the pleasure to use.
Hiden Laboratories. For the use of their microbalance in the early stages of the project to test if the theory matched the practical. They supplied a good number of hours free for the cause.
The denizens of comp.lang.fortran (usenet group) for helping with the code on some of my programs.