Recent advances in the synthesis, stabilization, passivation and functionalization of a wide range of metal, metal oxide, semiconductor and other inorganic, polymer, organic, carbon and biological nanoparticles are reported in this book. Diverse shapes of nanoparticles are discussed here including spheres, cubes, nanorods, nanowires, nanotubes, nanocapsules, and nanopyramids. In the section on metals, one can find description of colloidal and wet chemical approaches to synthesize nanoparticles, methods to control number of functional groups and to attain aqueous dispersibility, impact of stabilizers on SERS activity, and ways to tune plasmon resonance via nanoparticle shapes. A time dependent density functional theory to evaluate adsorption properties of passivating ligands is also developed.