Polymer research and synchrotron radiation perspectives.

The developments in synchrotron radiation based polymer research have been profound over the last two decades. Not only have many more beamlines suitable for soft condensed matter research become available since the pioneering days but also the technical developments with respect to X-ray beam quality and position sensitive X-ray detectors have been very substantial. This has allowed to increase the degree of experimental sophistication considerably by introducing sample environments which not only allow the materials to be studied outside of equilibrium conditions but in fact in conditions which closely start to resemble realistic processing conditions. These developments now allow polymer researchers to bring synchrotron radiation based tools to the whole spectrum from academic relevant characterisations to trying to understand the effects that desired processing parameters have on the final materials. In this manuscript, which is not intended as a comprehensive history, it is described how the historic interplay between technical developments and the experimental desires has generated the soft condensed matter synchrotron radiation toolbox that is at present available by following some of the major areas that have been the subject of polymers in the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]