The nanometer-scale luminescent monodisperse silica spheres have been prepared by a water/oil (W/O) microemulsion method and the size of these spheres changed with the different concentrations of 3 ami nopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) The luminescent monodisperse silica spheres at the submicrometer scale have been prepared via Stober method and the particles size increased with the increase of the amino concentrations After calcination all silica spheres do not change obviously in size The annealed silica spheres contain C impurities and O defects which resulted in the luminescence of silica spheres The spheres showed variations in emission due to the different size and the concentration of organosiloxane precursors Therefore the emission can be tuned finely via the change of organosiloxane precursor and the size of samples (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved