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Interfacial processes control the properties of many technologically relevant materials and devices with continuously shrinking dimensions, where issues of complexity at microscopic length scales should be faced and understood. The lateral inhomogeneity in the surface composition and morphology by nature, design or result of reorganization processes demands appropriate techniques for sub-micrometer analysis. Important frontiers in understanding interfacial phenomena have advanced thanks to the development of synchrotron-based scanning and imaging x-ray photoelectron microscopes, which can perform chemical imaging with lateral resolution of few tens of nm and spectroscopy from spots of 0.1 µm. Selected results will illustrate recent achievements in the characterization of nano-structured materials and morphologically complex surfaces, including identification of degradation processes in devices and mass-transport driven reorganization processes, which can introduce lateral heterogeneity in the composition and reactive properties of the surface. The limits in applications of the scanning and imaging x-ray photoelectron microscopes imposed by the operation principle or due to unforeseen or undesired events will be outlined and discussed. |