Recent developments and applications of grazing incidence scattering

A review of recent developments and applications of grazing incidence scattering is presented. In particular, high energy X-rays now make possible the investigation of buried, solid–liquid and liquid–liquid interfaces with high spatial resolution and possibly time resolution. Elemental sensitivity can be provided by resonant reflectivity and fluorescence based techniques using hard and soft X-rays. The use of partial coherence at third generation synchrotron sources enables one to go beyond the statistical properties of interfacial systems and to investigate their dynamics.