The ability to form oxide nanorods is of great interest in a number of areas. In this paper, we report the template-based growth of nanorods of several oxide ceramics, formed by means of a combination of sol-gel processing and electrophoretic deposition. Both single metal oxides (TiO2, SiO2) and complex oxides (BaTiO3, Sr2Nb2O7, and Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O-3) have been grown by this method. Uniformly sized nanorods of about 125-200 nm in diameter and 10 mum in length were grown over large areas with near unidirectional alignment. Desired stoichiometric chemical composition and crystal structure of the oxide nanorods was readily achieved by an appropriate procedure of sol preparation, with a heat treatment (700degreesC for 15 min) for crystallization and densification.