Specially designed wide-field fluorescence microscopes use for SMS also allows studying bulk sample of materials with light diffraction limited resolution. We can measure luminescence spectra, luminescence decay kinetics, luminescence excitation spectra from selected local regions of the sample. These techniques are used very extensively to unravel properties of modern semiconductor materials like metal-halide perovskites, conjugated polymers, nanowires and so on. (see e.g. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00058-w)

We also are especially interested in applying optical super-resolution ideas based on observation of single emitters (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2014) in material science.
(http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.6b07407)