Lithium niobate has attracted much attention since the 1970s due to its capacity to modify the light by means of an electric control. In this chapter, we review the evolution of electro-optical (EO) lithium niobate waveguides throughout the years, from Ti-indiffused waveguides to photonic crystals. The race toward ever smaller EO components with ever-lower optical losses and power consumption has stimulated numerous studies, the challenge consisting of strongly confining the light while preserving low losses. We show how waveguides have evolved toward ridges or thin film-based microguides to increase the EO efficiency and reduce the driving voltage. In particular, a focus is made on an easy-to-implement technique using a circular precision saw to produce thin ridge waveguides or suspended membranes with low losses.

High-resolution spectrometers are nowadays achievable in compact devices using integrated optics. The approach developed here consists in obtaining a static interferogram by means of a Fresnel reflection at the waveguide output (Lippmann interference between forward and backward beams) and then sample the fringes by periodically etching the waveguide with transverse nanogrooves, that will collect a negligible part of the flux. We present the first SWIFTS-Lippmann interferometer in the near and mid-infrared, thanks to high form factor grooves obtained by focused ion beam in lithium niobate, which opens the way to electrooptic modulation of the interferogram and thus, sampling on-chip, without any moving part. Possible applications are high-resolution spectroscopy and accurate measurement of effective refractive index of a waveguide. A measurement of the effective group refractive index of the guided mode is presented.