The era of nanophase and nanostructured materials has dawned. An exciting future of developments in fundamental science and fascinating discoveries in many fields lies before us. A broad range of applications in applied science and in industry is already emerging and new applications will appear at an accelerating rate.

The publication of these four volumes provides a valuable and timely contribution to the development of the science of materials on a nanometer scale. Already the scientific and popular literature abounds with thousands of articles on the many aspects of the subject and new ideas and results are reported at an increasing number of conferences. It is very difficult to keep track of the progress: what has been established and what things are mere projections. The Editors have provided an important service to the scientific community in bringing together in these four volumes a collection of authoritative reviews of the status of the many lines of investigation in a well-organized and coherent presentation.

The explosive growth of the science of nano-systems in recent years has followed the many years of development of the means for characterizing such materials on the scale of nanometers or smaller. The accrued store of knowledge derived by high-resolution electron microscopy, electron nanodiffraction, scanning electron microscopy and the various forms of scanning probe microscopy provided the background on the detailed structures and morphologies of a large number of solid state systems. The more traditional methods for study of materials in bulk, such as the various optical spectroscopies...