Single-phase Er 2 SiO 5 nanocrystal aggregates were produced on a large scale using Si nanowire ͑Si-NW͒ arrays as templates. A dense array of Si-NWs was grown by vapor-liquid-solid mechanism using Au catalyst on Si ͑111͒ substrate. Afterwards, ErCl 3 ·6H 2 O dissolved ethanol solution was spin coated and annealed first at 900°C for 4 min in a flowing N 2 /O 2 environment and then at 1200°C in a flowing Ar environment for 3 min. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, and high-resolution transmission electron microscope measurements indicate that due to the use of Si-NWs, such a short annealing procedure is sufficient to completely transform the Er-coated Si-NWs into a thick, large-area aggregate of pure, single-phase to There is a strong and growing interest in developing Si photonics that can integrate the fast, lossless information carrying capacity of photonics with Si integrated circuit technology to overcome the impending "interconnect bottleneck." 1 In particular, a great effort has been made in developing a Si-based light source, especially a laser, that can overcome the inherent limitation of the indirect band gap of Si. 1,2 Among the many possible ways of obtaining light emission from Si, 3-5 using the rare earth ion Er 3+ as an optical dopant has attracted a special attention because of its ability to provide light at 1.5 m that is compatible not only with optical telecommunication but also with silicon-oninsulator based Si microphotonic devices. 5,6 Furthermore, Er doping has a history of proven success in providing optical gain and lasing when doped into silica fiber amplifiers. 7 The intra-4f transition of Er 3+ that gives rise to the 1.5 m luminescence is parity forbidden and occurs due to the effects of the crystal field surrounding Er 3+ ions. This leads to long luminescence lifetimes and, when doped into an amorphous host such as silica, large inhomogeneous broadening of the atomic luminescence peak that allow for low-noise, broadband amplification capability of EDFAs. Unfortunately, the same qualities can lead to severe limitations for its applicability for Si photonics that requires a large optical gain in a limited wavelength range from a micrometer-sized volume, since the combination of long luminescence lifetimes and a broad luminescence peak results in a low gain cross section at a particular wavelength. Increasing the gain requires a very high Er concentration, but the concentration of optically active Er that can be doped into a host material without clustering is limited, even for an amorphous host such as silica. 8,9 Another way of increasing the gain cross section per wavelength is reducing the inhomogeneous broadening of Er 3+ luminescence by using a crystalline host matrix, but even in that case, controlling the location of Er 3+ ions down to atomic levels is difficult. 10 A rather interesting alternative to Er doping that can overcome these difficulties is to raise the Er concentration so high that a stable, Er rich crystalline phase can form. In particular, crystalline ra...