Advanced surface engineering based on thin films technology is of growing importance in materials sciences today. Techniques to produce materials with tailor-made properties are being developed. Vapor growth processes like CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) are especially suited for this purpose. Vapor growth of materials is a very complex and dynamic process. It involves the generation of surface vacancies and adsorption of different gaseous species to various radical surface sites. Other important processes include surface abstraction and migration, as well as nucleation and a continued growth. Quantum mechanical calculations are useful for us to be able to get the atomic-level understanding that is necessary to reach for an understanding of these processes, as well as for making predictions about materials properties. Materials properties can generally be changed in two different ways. Firstly, it is possible to change it by changing the chemical and/or structural composition of the material. Secondly, a change may be obtained by varying the size of nanoparticles, or by varying the film thicknesses. Currently there is a great scientific and technological interest in these types of quantum confinement effects. The underlying reason is that various materials properties can be manipulated in fascinating ways by controlling dimension, rather that by controlling composition alone. Various inorganic compounds, with interatomic bonds that range from covalent to ionic types, will be focused in this presentation. One of the major goals is then to investigate and compare the growth processes for these different materials. Another main goal is to investigate the effect of various parameters (e.g., surface termination, amount and types of defects and dopants, sizes) on materials properties like electrical, optical and mechanical. All of these knowledges are very useful in the development of new experimental designs, as well as in the deposition of more artificial structures.