„Soft materials“ such as liquids, liquid crystals and polymers play an increasing role when approaching „soft-hard” structures on a submicrometer scale. Properties are basically controlled by the interface. Liquids might order in layers, liquid crystals change the alignment close to the interface and block-polymers will change their respective structure in contact with an interface. In many cases single-molecule based techniques are a sensitive tool to follow both dynamics and structure locally with ultra high sensitivity.