We have demonstrated that nanowires of various metals, Ge, and Ga2O3 can be grown by high-temperature glancing angle deposition (HT-GLAD). The nanowires of metals including Al, Cu, Ag, Au, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Zn are self-catalyzed, while the nanowires of other materials such as Ge and Ga2O3 are catalyzed by Au nanoparticles. However, once the nanowires start to grow, the growth modes of the HT-GLAD nanowires are fundamentally the same, i.e., nanowires with uniform diameter grow only when the vapor is incident at a very high glancing angle and reach a length larger than 1-8 mu m even though the number of deposited atoms corresponds to the average thickness of 20-30 nm. This suggests that there is a universal growth mechanism for the nanowires grown by HT-GLAD. (C) 2013 The Japan Society of Applied Physics