Room temperature β-FeSi2 light emitting diodes have been fabricated by conventional ULSI processes using a recently developed dislocation engineering approach. The devices were fabricated by iron implantation into pre-grown abrupt silicon p–n junctions followed by low energy boron implantation to form the dislocation loops. Room temperature emission at ∼1.6 μm was obtained from most of the dislocation engineered devices, in contrast to standard ion beam synthesised β-FeSi2 diodes, where no electroluminescence was observed.