ABSTRACT
Metal oxides are presently employed in a number of advanced technological applications ranging from sensing, biology, and energy. For such applications, a good control of morphological, structural, and functional properties is required in order to improve or enhance the performance of the materials and the related devices. In this chapter, we review our work on the pulsed laser deposition of nanostructured ilms and surfaces showing that a ine-tuning of morphology and structure can be achieved for metal oxides such as tungsten and titanium oxide. Starting from the control of the building units constituting the material, we show that ilm morphology can be varied from compact to columnar and
nanostructured to a hierarchical assembly of nanoparticles and inally to highly porous foam-like. Film structure can be varied from amorphous to nanocrystalline with the possibility to vary the oxide phase. Finally, we discuss the possible applications in which such oxides can have good performances as functional materials.
