We propose an alternative bottom-up technique for designing, fabricating andmonolithically integrating optical components, including functional distributed feedbacklasers, modulators, waveguides, etc in a single semiconductor wafer without any need foretching or post-processing epitaxial growth. The proposed technique is based on theformation of semiconductor quantum templates at the well/barrier interfaces of quantumwell structures. Such templates are responsible for changing the thickness of a quantumwell in designated regions by adding one extra monolayer of the well material in thoseregions during the growth process. We show that, using a control laser field, thesetemplates or sub-nanoscale high monolayer features allow us to spatially control theformation of electromagnetically induced transparency, gain without inversion, andcoherent enhancement/suppression of the refractive index along the plane of the quantumwell. We demonstrate that this can lead to bottom-up design capabilities for functionaloptical devices and their monolithic integration using a single epitaxial growth process.