The nanowires and nanotubes are produced by using a pulsed electrodeposition process with conducting materials in perfectly ordered alumina pores channel arrays or by multilayer coating of the oxide pore walls with polymers, oxides and metals. The porous alumina templates are fabricated by a lithographic guided self-assembly technique, where the feature size of the lithographic pattern is much larger than the periodicity of the pore arrays. After the growth process the nanowires and nanotubes can be transferred into solutions or integrated in microelectronic devices by a selective chemical etch of the aluminum oxide matrix.