Recently

the developing direction of materials is the functional complementarity and the property optimization.The rare earth complexes have highly luminescent properties and good chromatic purity

but they are unstable and lack the desired mechanical properties to be directly used as luminescent sources. These problems are expected to be solved by doping the complexes into suitable solid matrices. The resulting (inorganic/)organic hybrid luminescent materials combine the respective characteristics of organic and inorganic parts.According to the interactions between the rare earth complexes and the matrices

the hybrid materials include Class Ⅰ(the interactions are weak

typically hydrogen bonds or Van der Waals forces) and Class Ⅱ(the organic ligand is covalently linked to the silica framework).We briefly describe the preparation methods and give a review on the developments for the two classes hybrid luminescent materials. The developing trend for inorganic/organic hybrid materials doped with rare earth complex is also prospected.