Integrated optics is a technology which aims at constructing so-called integrated-optical devices or photonic integrated circuits, containing several or many optical components which are combined to fulfill some more or less complex functions.

The original inspiration of integrated optics came from the technology of electronic integrated circuits, which has shown a rapid development over several decades and has lead to amazing achievements, such as e.g. complex and powerful microprocessors containing many millions of transistors, specialized signal processors, or computer memory chips with huge Data storage capacity. Unfortunately, integrated optics has not been able to match the progress of microelectronics in terms of the complexity of possible devices.