Electrochemical methods are widely used in nanotechnology for templating and nanofunctionaliaztion of surfaces.  The best known examples of these applications’ are aluminum and titanium anodic oxides.  Aluminum and titanium metals when anodized in suitable solutions are capable of producing nanoporous structures. The regularity, size and thickness of these structures can be tuned easily by playing with the metal structure and also by adjusting the electrochemical parameters during the anodization process. Moreover applicability of this method on large surface areas brings a big advantage when compared to other techniques such as lithography.   In this presentation after a brief introduction of aluminum and titanium anodization, application examples will be given concentrating on the studies conducted in our research group. The first examples of application will be on utilization of aluminum anodic oxides for production of free standing nanowire structures (Figure 1) that are used as ultra capacitors and substrates for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. The second group of examples will be on the usage of titanium anodic oxides as gas sensors. These oxides with their controllable nanostructures have a high potential for gas sensing applications. Doping them with other metal such as Cr, Nb, and Al further increases their sensitivity and selectivity. The example that will be concentrated on will be the improvement of hydrogen gas sensing properties titanium oxide nanostructures (Figure 2) by doping them with aluminum.