Preface

The advances in micro and nanotechnologies nowadays are nothing less than spectacular. Materials, structures, devices, and systems never seen before are appearing at an accelerated pace, while new properties and novel phenomena are being discovered almost every day. The microelectromechanical system (MEMS) and microoptoelectromechanical (MOEMS) technologies have brought a multitude of devices with ultracompact dimensions and with vastly enhanced or even completely novel properties and characteristics. Nanotechnologies are continuously expanding and improving the toolbox of available materials and systems, smudging the limits between technological and natural, even biological, and the potentials for further expansion appear literally limitless. The quest toward ever smaller dimensions and ever-increasing control over structures and properties is continuing and is already having a profound influence on practically all fields of applied science, steadily permeating more and more facets of ordinary life. What is valid generally, is also valid in optoelectronics and photonics, actually maybe even more so than in some other fields. Completely novel areas are being created, ensuring manipulation with light at an unprecedented level. Micro and nanofabrication of structures with a periodicity of refractive index that may extend to all three dimensions have resulted in photonic bandgap materials, also known as photonic crystals, ensuring manipulation with photons in a manner similar to that with electrons in semiconductors. Subwavelength structuring of metal-dielectric materials brought metamaterials, structures possessing electromagnetic properties not readily met in nature and often unexpected and sometimes even counterintuitive. These include materials with values of refractive index below zero or equal to zero. It also created the field of plasmonics, dedicated to manipulation with evanescent, surface-bound electromagnetic waves that build a link between electronics and optics, ensuring devices with compact dimensions of micro and nanoelectronic circuits that operate at the speed of optical signals. Structures and devices are being created which until recently were deemed impossible. The advent of micro and nanophotonics has brought astounding enhancements to different passive and active devices. In the field of infrared technologies, MEMS and NEMS, it ensured the appearance of a new generation of thermal detectors,