Whatever the size of mobile phones or computers are, the way in which such electronic devices operate relies on the interactions between materials. For this reason, engineers as well as researchers need to know exactly how specific chemical elements inside a computer chip or a transistor diode behave, and what happens when these elements bond. Physicists of Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, have now developed an innovative method that enables them to obtain several different types of information simultaneously from the interior of a nanoscale building block—and this while it is in the active state. The researchers from Jena and their partners have reported their findings in the current issue of the specialist journal Science Advances.