A large variety of material systems for light emission and detection were studied: from very small band gap semiconductors for infra-red (IR) detectors to wide band gap semiconductors for ultra violet (UV) emission as well as CdSe/ZnSe QDs for single photon emitters and rare earth doped oxides for laser fabrication. The growth and characterization aspects were tackled. This work will focus on the relations between the growth procedures and the optical properties. The information that can be gained from optical studies as well as the limitations of those ones will be explained in each case. Following that, a number of projects will be presented. The main one will be based on how to circumvent the problems linked with p-type doping of wide bandgap semiconductors. This project, based on field effect hole injection in wide band-gap semiconductors addresses the major challenge of fabricating efficient deep UV emitters.