An Introduction of Controlled Sizes and Shapes of Nanostructured Materials and Their Applications

For the past decades, nanostructured materials have greatly attracted attention and developed intensively for interdisciplinary ϐields, owing to the nanoscience and nanotechnology that are near the forefront of exciting area of science and technology [1]. The explosions of these materials in both academic and industrial interests are arisen from the remarkable variations in their corresponding characteristics. Nanostructured materials are deϐined scientiϐically as the materials whose structural elements, e.g., clusters, crystallites, or molecules, have one of dimensions in the range of 1 to 100 nm. Recent advances in functional nanostructured materials focused on the size-dependent physics and chemistry have been progressively investigated. Moreover, the nanostructured materials can be constructed from zero-dimensional (0-D) nanoparticles to threedimensional (3-D) hierarchical nanostructures through the variety

of synthetic approaches. Shape effect of nanostructured materials on their related properties has been simultaneously discussed. As the result, it is noticed that the nanostructured materials with controlled size and shape are important because their electrical, optical, and magnetic properties depend strongly on their size and shape [2]. In this chapter, some efforts taken the size and shape effects into account on their relative properties of nanostructured materials such as semiconductors, hematite (α-Fe2O3), and platinum (Pt) are brieϐly introduced.