This course will introduce fundamental approaches and general strategies to the syntheses and processing of nanomaterials. We will discuss methods such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), soft lithography, dippen nanolithography (DPN) and self-assembly. Several examples from the literature will be utilized in order to demonstrate the design and implementation of various methodologies intended to achieve nanostructures that can be useful in a variety of technologically-relevant applications. Such nanostructures include quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, hierarchical assemblies and molecular patterns (block co-polymers). We will describe a variety of spectroscopic and microscopic techniques that are particularly useful for the characterization of such nanostructures, such as atomic force microscopy (AFM), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and vibrational spectroscopy (FTIR and Raman).