Chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and its variants, is a more viable technology than the addition of surface active agents to modify nanoparticle surfaces. While thermally-activated CVD simply works by initiating the monomers using heat, some other techniques are more powerful and versatile. Indeed, higher energy CVD methods open up possibilities to a wider range of monomers. Unfortunately, different terminologies and classifications due to parallel work have led to confusion. This paper presents and explains the different techniques as well as their equivalent terminologies to clarify the big picture. While the demand for functionalized nanoparticles grows rapidly, current functionalization methods are still too expensive for most applications. This paper is intended to be a practical review of the gas phase methods available in order to identify a potential candidate for large scale functionalization of nanoparticles. This study identifies photo-initiated CVD (PICVD) as an ideal solution for scalable particle functionalization technology. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.