Materials science and X-ray techniques

Many novel synchrotron-based X-ray techniques directly address the core questions of modern materials science but are not yet at the stage of being easy to use because of the lack of dedicated beamlines optimized for specific measurements. In this article, we highlight a few of these X-ray techniques and discuss why, with ongoing upgrades of existing synchrotrons and with new linear-accelerator-based sources under development, now is the time to ensure that these techniques are readily available to the larger materials research community.