The research interest of the Micro and Nanostructure Physics Group is focused onto the physical properties of nanostructured materials. In particular, onto electronic, magnetic, and plasmonic properties and their interplay. The investigations comprise characterizing and understanding of the properties of bulk material and its nanostructures, manipulating these properties by controlling the shapes, sizes as well as the arrangement of the nanostructures and, finally, using such structures as building blocks in novel device concepts. Prerequisites of such studies are a controlled fabrication of the nanostructure arrangements either by self-assembly or by top-down processing and, furthermore, the development of suitable methods for characterizing nanostructure ensembles as well as individual nanostructures by optical spectroscopy or by electrical transport measurements.