Photonic crystals offer a well-recognized ability to control the propagation of modes of light in an analogous fashion to the way in which nanostructures have been harnessed to control electron-based phenomena. This has led to proposals and indeed demonstrations of a wide variety of photonic-crystal-based photonic devices with applications in areas including communications, computing and sensing, for example. In such applications, photonic crystals can offer both a unique performance advantage, as well as the potential for substantial miniaturization of photonic systems. However, as this review outlines, two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) structures for the spectral region covering frequencies from the ultraviolet (UV) to the near-infrared (near-IR) ( 2 m) are challenging to fabricate with appropriate precision, and in a cost-effective and also flexible way, using traditional methods. Naturally, a key concern is how amenable a given approach is to the intentional incorporation of selected defects into a particular structure. Beyond passive structures, attention turns to so-called active photonic crystals, in which the response of the photonic crystal 39