Nanotechnology is the application of nanoscience for making useful devices.

In turn, nanoscience is the science that relates to objects with at least one dimension between one and one hundred nanometres in length [1]. After more than twenty years of basic and applied research, nanotechnology is gaining its application for commercial use [2-6]. Nanoscale materials are used in electronic, cosmetics, automotive and medical products [7]. But it is difficult to find out how many nano consumer products are in the market and which merchandise could be called nano. As of April 2011, there are already over 1300+ nanotech products existing in the world [7]. Basic objective of nanotechnology is to control the size in such a way where sharp transitions in properties as compared to bulk are observed. Nanoscale materials frequently show behavior which is intermediate between that of a macroscopic solid and an atomic or molecular system. Due to their reduced dimension and increased surface area, these materials possess new physical and chemical properties which are distinctively different from their bulk counterparts. Nanoparticles, in general, are supposed to have nearly half of their atoms contained in top two monolayers, which make optical properties highly sensitive to surface morphology. Control over movement of electrons and holes and structure of surface has been of special importance for technology development related to very low dimensional optonics and electronics. In semiconductor nanomaterials, the absorption edge is blue-shifted from the bulk bandgap when the dimension of the material is comparable or smaller than the Bohr radius of bulk exciton. In noble metal particles, as their particle size are reduced to tens of nanometers, a strong absorption known as surface plasmon absorption arises from the collective oscillation of electrons in their conduction band. In transition metal nanoparticles, the increase in the surface-to-volume ratio sometimes makes them useful as catalyst with high surface reactivity and selectivity. In metal nanowires, a reduced 2 Chapter 1 electrical conductivity is observed as a result of increased electronic energy level spacing. In addition to that, ferromagnetism of bulk materials is transformed to superparamagnetism in the nanometer scale since the large surface energy can provide sufficient energy for domains to spontaneously switch polarization directions. Among many important physical properties, optical properties of nanomaterials have always been given special attention. The unique absorption and emission properties of nanomaterials result from their discrete electronic energy levels and make these nanomaterials useful in applications such as display devices, light emitting diodes, photocatalyst, solar cells and biological labels [1,3]. However, such usefulness relies strongly on the ability that one can control or tune the properties of these materials. For it the major three parameters are commonly modified to tailor the optical properties of nanomaterials, i.e. the size, shape and composition.