This review briefly summarizes the recent development in fabrication of conductive tracks with inkjet printing technology. Special emphasis will be placed on material selection and printing procedures. Troubleshooting guidelines for frequent problems in inkjet printing methods, such as material selection, ink formulation, ink-substrate interaction, and post-treatment of inks, are elucidated in this article to fabricate conductive tracks or electrodes with well-defined patterns. Related applications and unsolved challenges are also briefly reviewed in this article.

We have developed a vacuum chamber and control system for rapid testing of microfabricated surface ion traps. Our system is modular in design and is based on an in-vacuum printed circuit board with integrated filters. We have used this system to successfully trap and cool barium ions and have achieved ion 'dark' lifetimes of 31.6 s ± 3.4 s with controlled shuttling of ions. We provide a detailed description of the ion trap system including the in-vacuum materials used, control electronics and neutral atom source. We discuss the challenges presented in achieving a system which can work reliably over two years of operations in which the trap under test was changed at least 10 times.