The emergence of powerful nanomaterials characterization techniques promises to underpin a new range of advances in materials research. There have been significant developments in the characterization of the phase, structure, composition, and dynamics of materials at the nanoscale. Articles in this issue report recent advances in three areas: atom probe tomography, x-ray nanobeam scattering and diffraction, and x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. Each of these provides three-dimensional insight into hard materials in ways that have been previously unavailable. Taken together, these emerging methods have the potential to provide new tests for materials theory and computation and to extend significantly the range of questions that can be answered in materials research.

强大的纳米材料表征技术的出现有望支持材料研究领域的新进展。在纳米级材料的相，结构，组成和动力学的表征方面已经有了重大发展。本期文章报道了三个领域的最新进展：原子探针层析成像，x射线纳米束散射和衍射以及x射线光子相关光谱法。这些工具中的每一个都以以前无法获得的方式提供了对硬质材料的三维洞察力。综上所述，这些新兴方法有可能为材料理论和计算提供新的测试，并极大地扩展了材料研究中可以回答的问题范围。