Digital heterodyne methods are employed in conjunction with periodic fringe projection to produce a fast automated surface relief measurement technique. A method of sampling the image with a solid state detector array which produces a moire fringe image free of the noise terms normally present with moire techniques is presented along with an extension to Whittaker-Shannon sampling theory to cover the moire aliasing phenomena. The limitations imposed on the surface slopes by the requirement that the properly moire sampled image spectra must be confined to a moire interval are given. Moire sampling allows an optical processing step (removal of the reference surface tilt), while classical nonaliased sampling produces the same information with respect to a tilted surface. General additive noise is analyzed as regards both integrating bucket and phase stepping algorithms and yields a signal to noise ratio dependent error with twice the frequency of the fringes for some algorithms. A phase averaging technique which eliminates these oscillatory errors as well as those caused by reference phase shift errors in all the algorithms is demonstrated. Both parallel and divergent geometries are discussed. The feasibility is experimentally demonstrated with results for the parallel case based on a system composed of commercially obtainable components.

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Diamond is of interest as an advanced functional material, since the extreme physical properties of diamond, suggests it is ideally suited to a range of new demanding applications. In this context, the thesis explores basic surface chemical properties of diamond thin films, along with electrochemical, electronic and electron emission processes involving this material. New experiments are reported concerning the nature of surface conductivity on diamond. Measurements clearly show that the conductivity only arises if a hydrogenated diamond surface is exposed to water vapour, in the presence of chemical species capable of acting as electron acceptors. The conduction properties of surface conductive diamond in aqueous solution are also studied, and the first detailed electrochemical investigations of this material are described. Comparative electrochemical studies of nanocrystalline and boron-doped diamond have been performed. Investigations of electrode stability, and the accessible "potential window" are described, as well as the behaviour of a range of 'redox' systems, including transition metal complexes, metal deposition/stripping, and bio-related organic species. Significant differences between the behaviour of nanodiamond and microcrystalline boron-doped material are observed. A range of surface chemical and threshold photoemission studies of diamond thin films are reported. The results indicate that quantum photoyields (QPYs) are insensitive to the diamond "quality", although the wavelength selectivity is dependent on it. The adsorption of oxygen strongly reduces the QPY, although this only occurs slowly in the presence of O₂ because of a low reactive sticking probability. Much more rapid uptake of oxygen and consequent reduction of photoyield is observed in the presence of atomic O or electronically excited dioxygen O₂*. The presence of alkali metals on the diamond surface increases the QPY, and reduces the sensitivity of the QPY to surface oxygen. Significant differences between the surface chemical properties of Li, and other adsorbed akali metals (K and Cs) are observed.