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When particle dimensions are reduced to the order of several nanometers, their physical and chemical properties deviate significantly from the bulk properties of such materials. Because of this, there is abundant potential for their use in future technologies including electronic and optoelectronic, mechanical, chemical, cosmetic, medical, drug, and food technologies. However, due to their extremely small sizes, the particles suffer from many problems related to their surface and thermal stability, shape preservation, handling, assembly in devices, etc. It is therefore an important challenge to solve these problems by developing slightly larger particles (e. g. on the submicrometer scale) in which the properties generated by the nanoscale material are preserved. One approach to this is to trap nanoparticles in a micrometer-sized inert matrix. This approach allows the nanoscale properties to be retained, since nanoparticles …