Considerable interest is being exhibited in the novel and enhanced properties of nanostructured materials. These materials, with their constituent phase or grain structures modulated on a length scale less than 100nm, are now artificially synthesized by a wide variety of physical, chemical, and mechanical methods. Today, scientists and engineers have access to a wealth of technologies such as self-assembly, chemical template, electron-beam lithography, focused-ion-beam (FIB) lithography, nanoimprint, nanomolding, and scanning-probe lithography to build nanostructures at unprecedented scales, resolution, and throughput. The art of developing functionalized nanostructured materials exploiting unusual interfacial properties seems to have produced hitherto unknown man-made materials. Exploitations of nanostructured metal and oxide materials with many excited optical, chemical, and mechanical properties will lead to the broad range of potential applications including catalyst, drug discovery, sensing, nanoimaging, spectroscopy, optoelectronics, data storage, and structured materials with enhanced mechanical properties.

This special issue will be focused on the function-motivated nanostructure design, fabrication, characterization, and application includeing metal, oxide, and ceramics. Correspondingly, we intend to look for research and review papers that cover a wide range of recent progress on the chemical and physical fabrication methods of nanostructures of inorganic materials, their optical, chemical, mechanical, and biomedical properties and application. Engineering the shape of nanostructures for applications requires a detailed understanding of growth mechanisms under different synthesis conditions. The growth mechanism, theoretical and computational studies are equally welcome.

Potential topics include, but not limited to the following areas:

• Metal nanostructures: design, fabrication, and applications in catalyst, optoelectronics, sensors, biomedicines, among others
• Oxide nanostructures: design, fabrication, and applications in photochemistry, optoelectronics, biomedicines, among others
• Surface nanostructure and nanoengineering of ceramic materials
• Characterization of inorganic nanostructured materials
• Computer modeling and simulation of nanostructure analysis

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: