Metal oxides are an interesting class of materials largely investigated nowadays, and displaying unique properties that include mechanical stress tolerance, high optical transparency, exceptional carrier mobilities, among others. These materials can adopt several and distinct structural geometries with electronic structures that can exhibit metallic, semiconductor or insulator characters. The intrinsic properties of this sort of materials is directly related to their size and structural characteristics. Bulk oxides are usually stable and robust with well-defined crystallographic structures. However, generally at the nanoscale range, materials tend to display improvements on mechanical, physical and chemical properties. In general, nanomaterials have high surface/volume ratios that increase as the nanoparticle size decreases. Several metal-oxide materials have been reported in the last years, however the most investigated ones are centred on being low-cost, nontoxic, highly stable, earth-abundance, and so on. Zinc oxide (ZnO), titanium dioxide (TiO2), tungsten oxide (WO3), copper oxide (CuO and Cu2O), tin oxide (SnO and SnO2), vanadium oxide (VO2, V2O5) have all these prerequisites, despite some of them being environmentally friendly and easily produced. This symposium will focus on the key features of ZnO, TiO2, WO3, copper, tin and vanadium-based oxide nanostructures, as well as the techniques available for their complete structural, optical and electronic characterization. The nanostructure performance in all possible applications is intimately linked to their intrinsic properties and characteristics.
