The paper describes the implementation of a user-friendly high-pressure small-angle X-ray scattering cell suitable for biological solutions and soft materials.

Advanced grazing-incidence techniques have developed significantly during recent years. With the ongoing progress in instrumentation, novel methods have emerged which allow for an in-depth morphology characterization of modern soft-matter materials. Examples are in situ and in operando grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS), micro- and nanofocused GISAXS, time-of-flight (TOF) grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering (GISANS) and surface-sensitive resonant soft X-ray scattering techniques, including the potential to investigate polarization. Progress in software for data analysis is another important aspect.

A new versatile beamline for experiments with soft X-ray absorption, photoelectron emission and electron–ion coincidence spectroscopies is available at MAX IV Laboratory, Sweden, serving user communities from ultra-high-vacuum surface science to materials science and low-density matter research.

The development of a novel device for examining the three-dimensional structure of shear-aligned soft materials using small-angle X-ray scattering is reported.

The development of a scanning soft X-ray spectromicroscope is described.

The innovative pressure cell described, suitable for X-ray measurements combining both hydraulic and compressive pressures, is well adapted for studying poromechanical coupling in soft environments.

The Materials Imaging and Dynamics (MID) instrument at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility is described. Recent commissioning results are discussed to illustrate the potential experimental applications of MID.

A description of the Soft X-ray Research instrument (SXR) at the Linac Coherent Light Source is given. Recent scientific highlights illustrate the wide variety of experiments and detectors that can be accommodated at SXR.

It is shown how soft X-ray nanospectroscopy maps of powders (particle size ∼200 nm) can be analyzed to quantitatively retrieve X-ray linear dichroism (XLD) parameters. A computational modeling procedure is described that can be used in conjunction with Monte Carlo simulations to prove statistical dissimilarity of XLD parameters between different samples.

The study of the dynamics of radiation-sensitive soft-matter suspensions is demonstrated by means of sequential-shot X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy below the radiation-damage threshold at the SACLA free-electron laser.