Studies of nanosize (5-50 nm) island formation of Fe, Cr and Mg silicides on atomically clean silicon surfaces with (111) and (100) orientations, silicon growth atop nanosize silicide islands and multilayer repetition of developed growth procedure for all silicides have been carried out. Optimization of growth parameters has permitted to create multilayer monolithic heteronanostructures with buried nanocrystallites of iron and chromium disilicides. Only polycrystalline multilayer heteronanostructures with buried Mg2Si nanocrystallites have been created after optimization of growth procedures. A new approach to study optical properties of multilayer heteronanostructures has been developed and tested. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.