Submit to Materials Review for Materials

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Optical and Photonic Materials

A section of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944).

Section Information

The section “Optical and Photonic Materials” provides a platform for original articles and comprehensive reviews exploring all aspects of fundamental science and applied research that relates to materials used for optics and photonics. This is a dynamically developing area of knowledge and technology in need of new materials with unique properties. Since 2009, several Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry have been awarded for research in this area:

2009—For groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication (Charles Kuen Kao); for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor (Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith).

2010—For groundbreaking experiments involving two-dimensional material graphene (Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov).

2011—For the discovery of quasicrystals (Dan Shechtman).

2014—For the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources (Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura); for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy” (Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner).

2018—For groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics, for optical tweezers and their application to biological systems (Arthur Ashkin), and for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses (Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland).

2022—For experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science (Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger).

Optics and photonics refer to all methodologies and technologies that use photons over the entire spectrum from X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, and infrared, to the terahertz range, and their interaction with a variety of materials. Advanced and intelligent materials are needed to ensure the outstanding properties of light sources, light delivery devices, mirrors, fibers, and efficient laser active media. Relevant methods and instruments are widely used for precise processing of all types of materials, involving well-known and widely used technologies such as photolithography, laser printing, and laser engraving.

As part of photonics, biophotonics stimulates accelerated progress in medicine and biotechnology. This important technology arose at the junction of the most innovative developments of the last century, including photonics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. This evolving interdisciplinary field covers the optical technologies used in life sciences and medicine. Special, new, and biocompatible materials for implants, tissue phantoms, cell printing, cell labeling, light delivery, etc., must be extensively researched by physicists, chemists, engineers, biologists, and medical doctors, among other scientific professionals.

Topics of interest for this section include (but are not limited to) materials for:

Optical engineering; optoelectronics; nanophotonics; biophotonics; acoustooptics; thermal photonics; photoelectric devices; photocatalytic applications; luminescence applications; photoluminescence; organic and polymeric thin films; solar cells; photonic sensors and implants; photovoltaics; memristive devices; terahertz devices; nonlinear optics; photonic devices; light-emitting devices; photosensitizers and photosensitive systems; optical fibers; structured waveguides; lasers; luminescent detectors; transformers of ionizing radiation; optical metasurfaces and metamaterials; optical imaging and detection.