The current rapid development of photonics matches the progress of silicon-integrated circuits. However, the ultimate success of photonics requires integration of both active and passive functions into one compact form. For such integration, it is crucial to develop and integrate a large diversity of new materials and material structures that enable generation, manipulation and detection of optical signals at short-length scales. In many cases, the final performance will be fabrication-process-dependent, and controlling microstructure and materials interactions in the device synthesis will be...