Editorial
Authors: Sorger Volker 
Published: May 2015

The year 2015 will likely have a unique place in the history books for the optics
and photonics community, since it is paired with various events that are
exciting for this field. For one it is the 125th birthday of the Optical Society
(OSA), and in addition, the United Nations declared 2015 to be the Year Of
Light.

The first special issue of this year is dedicated to the topic of “Emerging
Materials on Nanophotonics”. While the field of nanophotonics has seen
tremendous momentum through the support of plasmonics, opto-mechanics, and
quantum photonics, it often are both the breakthroughs and continuing
developments of materials that bring enabling opportunities for this field.

For instance, the area of 2D materials has grown out of its infancy being
focused on Graphene into a crossdisciplinary subject area. Here, both scientific
and engineering potential are seen in a) novel physical effects, b) higher
functionality, and c) smaller form factors all found in one material option.
Coincidentally, theUSNational Science Foundation recently held a path
findingworkshop on 2D materials Beyond Graphene, and followed through with a
dedicated two-year program to fund engineering innovations of the same. Here,
the bandgap tunability of trimetal Dichalcogenides (TMD) has found to bear rich
bandgap tunability via composition, alloying, and altering design options such
as substrate choices or stress, thus providing a large variety of functions. In
this context it is interesting to note, that with the many material choices for
TMDs, the importance of targeted approaches towards accelerated
material-to-marketwas raised in theMaterial Genome Initiative by the US White
House.

However, with the fundamental challenge of nanophotonics – weak interactions
between light and matter – the choice of materials as both device building block
and functionality delivery option needs to be synergistically considered. In
this regard metal optics is seen as an emerging field that is able to contribute
to this design evolution of devices and systems with ever growing constrains.
However, materials with new functionalities and *Corresponding Author: Volker
Sorger: E-mail: sorger@email.gwu.edu form factors allow utilizing field
enhancement techniques in an unprecedented way. This, for instance, enables
subwavelength scale photonic and opto-electronic devices with performance
improvements such as utilized by the Purcell effect in light emitters,
detectors, or electro-optic switching devices.

On the other hand, certain novel materials are able to clearly outperform any
existing option; for instance transparent-conductive-oxides (TCO) have been
found to be able to alter its refractive index by unity. Lastly, with the
maturing of silicon photonics as an on-chip optics platform, higher integration
options are considered in this special issue; passive devices such as waveguides
made out of the electro-optically active Lithium Niobate aid highfunctionality
systems on-chip.

However, these novel materials and subsequent devices and systems need to be
compared and benchmarked in order to be a guide for the next phase of
opto-electronic integration and other technologies as carried out by some
contributions of this special issue.As the festivities around this Year Of Light
continue, this special issue summarizes some of the interesting work around the
emerging materials for nanophotonics.

Concluding, I would like to thank for the input and help of the fellow Guest
Editors, Jenifer Dionne, Alexandra Boltasseva, and Luke Sweatlock along with the
Nanophotonics staff, Dennis Couwenberg and Tara Dorrian. Sincerely