Rare earth activated glass-ceramic in planar format

Rare earth-activated glass-ceramic waveguides constitute a potential significant system to behave as an effective optical medium for light propagation and luminescence enhancement. We present a review on fabrication and optical, structural, and spectroscopic characterization of some kind of rare earth activated oxide glass-ceramic waveguides, obtained by sol-gel route with both bottom-up and top-down approaches, and fluoride glass-ceramic waveguides fabricated by physical vapor deposition.