Letter to the Editor Silicon as a candidate carrier for ERE

Amorphous hydrogenated carbons and their alloys with silicon are discussed as candidate carriers of Extended Red Emission. In this respect, their photoluminescence spectra are too blue, weak and broad. By contrast, crystalline nanoparticles of pure silicon are shown to satisfy the constraints of available observations. Such dust can plausibly condense, even in carbonrich circumstellar shells, in the form of polydispersed nuggets, either free or embedded in SiC, for instance.