Many mineralogical phases, as well as newly developed synthetic materials, occur in submicron to nanometer size scale, often intergrowth inside polyphasic systems. It is now well recognized that understanding the structural details at small size scales is important for modelling and probing the physical and chemical properties of materials and surfaces. A continuous series of technological developments and improvements in many analytical methods with submicron to nanoscale resolution have taken place in the last few decades. This has led to extensive research activity and new frontiers in Earth and geosciences at small size scales. Thus, modern mineralogy research is focused on the characterisation of the structure and properties of mineral surfaces and related substances at these fine-scales. There is an increasing interests in in situ and rapid characterizations and determination of micro- and nano- inclusions and phase transitions of minerals with high accuracy and reproducibility. Other research interests include the development of controlled high pressure and temperature techniques which allow the simulation of structural alterations of microstructures and observation of processes occurring at the nanoscale under deep Earth or extraterrestrial conditions. Another important area of research is the development of in situ or ex situ techniques and methods for studying microstructures and mineralogical compositions in extraterrestrial samples.

The session is aimed at presenting the state of art and recent developments and applications of analytical methods for material characterisations and behaviour at fine-size scales in geosciences. The topics covered by this session include, but is not limited to state-of-the-art high resolution and aberration-corrected electron microscopy, super-resolution fluorescence, non-synchrotron X-ray, electron diffraction , elemental analysis, 3D Tomographic Techniques and advanced spectroscopy techniques (e.g. IR, Raman, Mössbauer and luminescence techniques). Contributions discussing current challenges or future directions in nano-/micro-structure analysis and characterisation are particularly encouraged.