Basic concepts, advances and emerging applications of nanophotonics

Nanophotonics includes a diverse set of nontrivial physical processes, such as radiation-matter interaction, near-field optical microscopy, and the fabrication of nanophotonic materials, which extend far beyond diffraction limits. These effects have created new opportunities for a num-ber of applications in nonlinear optics, light harvesting, media transmission, optical and biosensing, luminescence, and display technology. Emerging technologies in numerous optical systems, involv-ing photon interaction with nanostructured materials at extremely small scales play a crucial role in improving our daily lives. The goal along this line is to develop nanometer-sized devices and equip-ment for efficient control and influence of photonic processes, in addition to slowing down the speed of photons. The industrial revolution has greatly impacted this multidisciplinary discipline, allowing researchers to discover new avenues in design, applied science, chemistry, physical science, and bio-logical technology. This review familiarizes readers with the basic concepts of photonic nanostruc-tures, including photonic nanoscale interactions, nanoconfinement, characteristics of nonlinear optical phenomena, and the use of photonic nanostructures in innovative domains such as light har-vesting, theragnostic, metasurfaces, photovoltaics and plasmonics applications. & COPY; 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).