Oxide nanomaterials have been attracting growing interest for both fundamental research and industrial applications ranging from gas sensors, light-emitting devices, to photocatalysts, and solar cells. The optical and electronic properties of oxide nanomaterials are strongly dependent on their surface morphologies as well as defects, such as surface areas, aspect ratios, foreign atom impurities, and oxygen vacancies. In this review, we describe some examples of our recent contributions to the nanomaterials and devices that exhibit remarkable functionalities based on one-dimensional nanostructures of ZnO and their hetero junctions as well as their variants with appropriately incorporated dopants