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It is widely recognized the understanding of local atomic structure of complex material (energy storage and conversion, catalysis, and a wide array of other functional materials) remain a challenge challenging because experimental tools to observe them are limited. The unique properties and characteristics of complex material are governed by these intricate structural-chemical relationships. Pair distribution functions (PDF) obtained from total scattering (high energy synchrotron X-ray and Neutron scattering) can reveal both the local and intermediate range structure of crystalline and disordered materials. As we all know that conventional reciprocal space diffraction only probes the average long-range structure of the Bragg planes, and information from EXAFS and XANES is limited to no more than third coordination shell, PDF can reveal both local distortions and measure the structural coherence up to several tens of Ångstrøm. A combination of multiple approaches and softwares using STEM-EDS, PDFgui (graphical interface built on the PDFfit2 engine), TOPAS v6 (combined reciprocal and real space neutron PDF data), DISCUS and RMCProfile (Reverse Monte Carlo software) were performed during my projects. My current work focused on characterizing high entropy oxides, ferroelectric, energy materials through synchrotron X-ray, neutron total scattering characterization and related probes methods, and the experimental activity also be closely supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.