The first workshop has been held in Moscow (in the Institute of Crystallography RAS) in 2004. It has been initiated by CNRS, RAS and French embassy in Moscow. The following seminars in this series have been held in Lille (France 2005), St. Petersburg (Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute 2006), Autrans (France, 2007).

Originally, the seminar covered three main fields: teraHertz and middle infrared range electronics, carbon and semiconducting nanostructures, spintronics and nanomagnetism. Starting from 2007, the field "teraHertz and middle infrared range electronics" have been separated into the independent workshop. Instead, a new field "Nanophotonics" has been introduced. This theme has attracted a great interest of participants in 2007 (Autrans, France). Moreover, during last 2-3 years the unique properties of two-dimensional carbon structure - graphene has attracted a lot of attention of scientific community. In the first time this subject will be included in the workshop program.

Workshop is a satellite meeting of Rusnanoforum.