This Brief presents a historical overview of the Forster-type nonradiative energy transfer and a compilation of important progress in FRET research, starting from Forster until today, along with a summary of the current state-of-the-art. Here the objective is to provide the reader with a complete account of important milestones in FRET studies and FRET applications as well as a picture of the current status.

This Brief presents a complete study of the generalized theory of Forster-type energy transfer in nanostructures with mixed dimensionality.

This Brief will focus on the functional uses and applications of FRET, starting with the derivation of FRET in the assemblies of nanostructures and subsequently giving application cases for biologists, physicists, chemists, material scientists, engineers, and those in many other fields whoever would like to FRET as a tool.