Time Resolved IR and X-Ray Simultaneous Spectroscopy: New Opportunities for the Analysis of Fast Chemical-Physical Phenomena in Materials Science

New powerful sources and advanced analytical techniques have been considered in the last decade to face up the continuously increasing scientific demands, in particular, in materials science. As an example, nano- science and nanotechnology researches are characterized by ultimate spatial resolution, fast and ultrafast time-resolved analysis, but the complexity of the investigated phenomena requires new analytical capabilities and new experimental techniques were introduced in the research arena. The availability all over the world of brilliant synchrotron radiation sources offers incredible opportunities. Many challenging experiments were made possible by these sources and understanding of many complex dynamical problems was obtained. Nevertheless, a strong demand of new analytical approaches, mainly based on concurrent and possibly simultaneous time-resolved experimental techniques, is emerging. Pioneering time resolved experiments combining X-ray and infrared radiation with a conventional source were performed more than a decade ago. Nowadays, many beamlines at third generation synchrotron radiation facilities are equipped with conventional sources to allow complementary techniques and the strategy of a concurrent analysis is mandatory in the investigation of many phenomena in frontier multidisciplinary researches. Moreover, new opportunities will be available by means of concurrent spectroscopic experiments investigating complex phenomena on a short timescale, from the sub-second to the microsecond time domain. We will present and discuss researches where the combination of IR and X-ray simultaneous experiments may return unique information on complex dynamical processes and phase transitions occurring in materials science. Finally, we will briefly describe the conceptual layout of a synchrotron radiation beamline to perform concurrent IR and X-ray experiments.