Grazing-incidence scattering—status and perspectives in soft matter and biophysics

Investigating lateral structures of surfaces and interfaces fromthe mesoscale down to atomic resolution is of growing interestto modify, functionalize, and understand the behavior of materialsin soft matter and biophysics. Grazing-incidence scatteringtechniques have proven to be very powerful for suchkind of studies. Using X-rays and neutrons also buried lateralstructures can be accessed in a non-destructive way. The largeprobed sample area provides a high statistical relevance of thedetermined structure information, and complex sample environmentsin combination with in situ and in operando experimentsprovide the full potential for gaining deep insights instructure formation processes. In the brief review, we reflect onthe current state of the art of grazing-incidence scatteringtechniques using X-rays and neutrons, fields of interest, andapplications in soft matter and biophysics, resulting in challengesand providing a short outlook. Owing to the alreadyavailable literature on X-ray–based techniques, we will set aslight emphasis on neutron-based techniques