Disorder and perturbed periodicity in materials are in the process of becoming a vital research area that has started to show that optical media do not necessarily have to be regular. Photonic materials with deliberately introduced disorder in their respective geometries and compositions show interesting novel and tunable unforeseen properties.

So far, countable scientific achievements have been reported in the areas of biology, materials science, nano-optics and -photonics that, however, already point towards a wealth of interesting effects with several applicative dimensions. This notion could be derived from the finding of structural disorder being often beneficial in nature and being useful as an engineering guide for the development of novel advanced optics and photonics devices.

The general subject of structural disorder is rapidly emerging into an area of interdisciplinary scientific interest, which is however still in its infancy. Therefore, the purpose of this symposium is to bring together specialists from various scientific communities such as physics, biology and materials science and engineering to advance the structural disorder research area based on fundamental and applied research with emphasis on multidisciplinary approaches and fabrication routes. Contributions from the fields of theoretical, applied and computational physics, optics and photonics in biology, materials engineering and nano-patterning are encouraged.

The development of novel approaches and design routes to realize tailored disorder in materials will be one of the main topics of the symposium. Presentations might include various patterning procedures including etching techniques, replica moulding, self-assembly, sol-gel procedures, solid state synthesis, soft lithography, layer-by-layer deposition with the focus on materials functions and properties.

biological optical optical properties photoreflectance quasicrystal simulation