Book excerpt: Plasmonic Materials and Metastructures: Fundamentals, Current Status, and Perspectives reviews the current status and emerging trends in the development of conventional and alternative plasmonic materials. Sections cover fundamentals and emerging trends of plasmonic materials development, including synthesis strategies (chemical and physical) and optical characterization techniques. Next, the book addresses fundamentals, properties, remaining barriers for commercial translation, and the latest advances and opportunities for conventional noble metal plasmonic materials. Fundamentals and advances for alternative plasmonic materials are also reviewed, including two-dimensional hybrid materials composed of graphene, monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, boron nitride, etc. In addition, other sections cover applications of plasmonic metastructures enabled by plasmonic materials with improved material properties and newly discovered functionalities. Applications reviewed include quantum plasmonics, topological plasmonics, chiral plasmonics, nanolasers, imaging (metalens), active, and integrated technologies. Provides an overview of materials properties, characterization and fabrication techniques for plasmonic metastructured materials Includes key concepts and advances for a wide range of metastructured materials, including metamaterials, metasurfaces and epsilon-near-zero plasmonic metastructures Discusses emerging applications and barriers to commercial translation for quantum plasmonics, topological plasmonics, nanolasers, imaging and integrated technologies