Light emission at 1.54 μm from an Er-doped amorphous silicon nitride layer coupled to photonic crystal resonators and plamonic arrays is studied. We observe the cavity resonances at cryogenic and room temperatures and under varying optical pump powers. The results demonstrate that small mode volume, high quality factor resonators enhance Er absorption rates dramatically at the cavity resonance. Photonic crystal cavity resonances exhibit linewidth narrowing with pump power at cryogenic temperatures, signifying absorption bleaching and partial inversion of the Er ions. In addition, we fabricate periodic metal-insulator-metal plasmonic structures with a simple bottom-up fabrication technique. We observe a factor of 10 increase of Er emission coupled to plasmonic structures. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.