Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Nanomaterials Volume 2012, Article ID 193734, 2 pages doi:10.1155/2012/193734 Editorial Bulk Nanostructured Metals and Alloys: Processing, Structure, and Thermal Stability Hamed Bahmanpour, 1 Amir Kajbafvala, 2 Mohammad H. Maneshian, 3 Hamid Reza Zargar, 4 and Khaled Youssef 2 1 Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA 2 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7907, USA 3 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, USA 4 Department of Metals and Materials Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4 Correspondence should be addressed to Hamed Bahmanpour, hbahman@ncsu.edu Received 21 October 2012; Accepted 21 October 2012 Copyright © 2012 Hamed Bahmanpour et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Nanostructured metals and alloys have been the focus of research during the past few decades due to their inter- esting microstructures and promising mechanical proper- ties. Despite the fact that this class of materials shows intriguing properties, there are roadblocks that prevent large-scale production and industrial application of these materials that include but not limited to low ductility and poor thermal stability. In this regard, tailoring mechanical and microstructural properties by developing new alloys and inducing different microstructural features via various processing routes have been the major point of interest for researchers to overcome the difficulties in industri- alization of nanomaterials. High tendency of nanograins to reduce their energy by grain coalescence and growth brings the thermodynamics and kinetics of grain growth to attention in order to understand the phenomena and develop thermally stable nanostructures. Attempts in this regard include reducing the mobility of a grain boundary by means of mechanisms such as solute drag, second-phase particle pinning, and chemical ordering. On the other hand, the demand for producing large-sized bulk parts, especially in structural applications, has led to the emergence of new processing techniques and further application-based approaches to the issue of the nanostructured metals and alloys. This special issue addresses the different challenges for up scaling the production of nanostructured metals and alloys with emphasis on processing, microstructure, and thermal stability. We would like to express our appreciation to all authors in this special issue for their help and efforts in addressing these current issues in the field. Furthermore, thanks are extended to all reviewers for enhancing the quality of these papers. This special issue contains six papers related to synthesis and characterization of nanostructured metals and alloys. In “Thermal stability of neodymium aluminates high-k dielectric deposited by liquid injection MOCVD using single-source heterometallic alkoxide precursors,” P. Taechakumput et al. studied the effects of high-temperature post deposition annealing (PDA) on the properties of the NdAlO x thin films, deposited by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) using single-source precursor. These NdAlO x thin films were shown to remain amorphous up to 50 ◦ C as indicated by XRD. No significant level of crystallinity or movement of metal ions was evident after annealing at 950 ◦ C as indicated by MEIS energy spectra. Good electrical integrity was maintained even after 950 ◦ C PDA showing the extracted dielectric permittivity of 12, a low leakage density of 7 × 10 −7 Acm −2 at 2 MV cm −1 , and a density of interface states at flat band D it of 4.01 × 10 11 cm −2 eV −1 . These features make the neodymium aluminate a potential candidate for the dielectric replacement. In their paper, Z. S. Hu et al. studied “Align Ag nanorods via oxidation reduction growth using RF-sputtering ” and demonstrated an oxidation reduction growth (ORG) technique with mixed-gas sputtering to create Ag nanorod arrays via oxide-assisted growth without any chemical solu- tions or contamination from aqueous solution. The ORG methodology is used to deposit an Ag buffer layer with