This book consists of a collection of review chapters that summarize the recent progress in the areas of metal and semiconductor nanosized crystals (nanocrystals). The interest in the optical properties of nanoparticles dates back to Faraday’s experiments on nanoscale gold. In these experiments, Faraday noticed the remarkable dependence of the color of gold particles on their size. The size dependence of the optical spectra of semiconductor nanocrystals was first discovered much later (in the 1980s) by Ekimov and coworkers in experiments on semiconductor-doped glasses. Nanoscale particles (islands) of semiconductors and metals can be fabricated by a variety of means, including epitaxial techniques, sputtering, ion implantation, precipitation in molten glasses, and.
