This article reports the epitaxial growth process and the characterizations of thulium doped or praseodymium cloped LiYE4 layers grown on pure LiYF4 substrates for the development of planar waveguide lasers. After having presented the key points of the growth process to achieve high quality crystalline layers, microstructural, chemical and optical characterizations of the epilayers are reported for various dopants compositions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.