When their sizes approach near 1nm, the surface atoms in ultrathin nanostructures will become dominant as compared with those in bulk or traditional nanocrystals with bigger sizes. As a result, the influence of surface effects on the inherent properties of the whole structure will become more remarkable. In this talk, we demonstrate the synthesis of ultrathin nanowires and nanoribbons with diameter/thickness less than 1 nm, a size comparable to that of a polymer chain. We found that the size reduction of the inorganic nanostructures brought them great similarity to macromolecules: the ultrathin nanowires mimicked the polymeric molecules in chain entanglement, non-Newton rheological behavior, gelation phenomenon and electrospinning viability; the ultrathin nanoribbons demonstrated interesting conformational diversity through energy balance among organic ligand, inorganic structure and solvent which can be compared to the conformational variety in biomacromolecules. We have also tried to bring two different compounds together at sub-1 nm scale, based on which different heteronanostructures have been designed. We have made progress in the controlled growth of CdS-ZnIn2S4helical nanostructures as well as Pt-Cu ultrathin nanosheets-based multi-metal heterostrucutres showing enhanced catalytic properties.