The implantation damage and rare earth (RE) luminescence in the wide band gap ternaries AlGaN and AlInN were studied and compared to GaN. For both ternaries lower damage levels were observed and in contrast to GaN, no surface amorphisation occurs during the implantation. Damage recovery of RE implanted GaN was studied for post implant annealing at temperatures between 800 °C and 1300 °C. The blue and IR Tm related luminescence intensity is seen to increase strongly with the annealing temperature. The two Tm lines observed at 478 nm and 465 nm are assigned to the 1G4 → 3H6 and the 1D2→3F4 transition, respectively. For GaN the line at 465 nm is fully quenched at RT while it becomes the dominant line for the ternaries. The blue luminescence intensity in the ternaries is significantly stronger than in GaN. Furthermore, AlInN shows a very high ratio of blue/IR luminescence. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)