ch. 1. Silicon nanocrystals enabling silicon photonics / Nicola Daldosso and Lorenzo Pavesi -- ch. 2. Theoretical studies of absorption, emission and gain in silicon nanostructures / Elena Degoli. [et al.] -- ch. 3. Computational studies of free-standing silicon nanoclusters / Olli Lehtonen and Dage Sundholm -- ch. 4. Optical gain in silicon nanocrystal waveguides measured by the variable stripe length technique / Hui Chen, Jung H. Shin, and Philippe M. Fauchet -- ch. 5. Si-nc based light emitters and Er doping for gain materials / Olivier Jambois. [et al.] -- ch. 6. Silicon nanocrystals : structural and optical properties and device applications / Fabio Iacona. [et al.] -- ch. 7. Optical spectroscopy of individual silicon nanocrystals / Jan Valenta and Jan Linnros -- ch. 8. Silicon nanocrystal memories / Panagiotis Dimitrakis, Pascal Normand, and Dimitris Tsoukalas -- ch. 9. Engineering the optical response of nanostructured silicon / Joachim Diener, Minoru Fujii, and Dmitri Kovalev -- ch. 10. Guiding and amplification of light due to silicon nanocrystals embedded in waveguides / Tomas Ostatnicky. [et al.] -- ch. 11. Silicon nanocrystals in silica : optical properties and laser-induced thermal effects / Leonid Khriachtchev -- ch. 12. Light emission from silicon-rich nitride nanostructures / Luca Dal Negro. [et al.] -- ch. 13. Energy efficiency in silicon photonics / Bahram Jalali, Sasan Fathpour, and Kevin K. Tsia -- ch. 14. Light emitting defects in ion-irradiated alpha-quartz and silicon nanoclusters / Juhani Keinonen. [et al.] -- ch. 15. Auger processes in silicon nanocrystals assemblies / Dmitri Kovalev and Minoru Fujii -- ch. 16. Biological applications of silicon nanostructures / Sharon M. Weiss.