During the last decade our expertise in nanotechnology has advanced considerably. The possibility of incorporating in the same nanostructure different organic and inorganic materials has opened up a promising field of research, and has greatly increased the interest in the study of properties of excitations in organic materials. In this book not only the fundamentals of Frenkel exciton and polariton theory are described, but also the electronic excitations and electronic energy transfers in quantum wells, quantum wires and quantum dots, at surfaces, at interfaces, in thin films, in multilayers, and in microcavities. Among the new topics in the book are those devoted to the optics of hybrid Frenkel-Wannier-Mott excitons in nanostructures, polaritons in organic microcavities including hybrid organic-inorganic microcavities, new concepts for organic light emitting devices, the mixing of Frenkel and charge-transfer excitons in organic quasi one-dimensional crystals, excitons and polaritons in one and two-dimensional crystals, surface electronic excitations, optical biphonons, and Fermi resonances by polaritons. All new phenomena described in the book are illustrated by available experimental observations.

The book will be useful for scientists working in the field of photophysics and photochemistry of organic solids (for example, organic light-emitting devices and solar cells), and for students who are entering this field. It is partly based on a book by the author written in 1968 - "Theory of Excitons" - in Russian. However the new book includes only 5 chapters from this version, all of which have been updated. The 10 new chapters contain discussions of new phenomena, their theory and their experimental observations.

Translated by: Gerard Czajkowski