Fundamentals and biomedical applications of photonic crystals: An overview

A remarkable progress has been made over the last decades on regular structures having dimensions similar to, or even smaller than the wavelengths of light. Such regular structures exhibit peculiar behaviors when interacting with light travelling through them - in quite different way from what would be expected from classical optics - like, for example, inhibition of light transmission and photonic band gap formation. As a noteworthy example we mention the exploits of photonic crystals properties in the field of supercontinuum lasers. This paper will briefly review photonic crystals by going over their basic topologies, as well as comparing their capabilities and range of medical applications. Our directions of research in this respect are pointed out.