Trapped ions are among the most promising paths to realizing quantum computers, having exhibited the highest fidelity gates and long coherence times. Scaling up will require the adoption of new technologies, and can be facilitated by new approaches. In this talk I will describe recent work from our group in both directions. Firstly I will describe the use of integrated optics to deliver light to multiple zones of an ion trap chip in scalable manner, and give an impression of the new types of control which might be enabled by this approach [1,2,3]. I will then introduce a new concept for scaling trapped-ion quantum computers based on microfabricated Penning traps, introducing flexible 2-dimensional ion transport while removing the need for high-voltage radio-frequency fields and thus improving compatibility with standardized chip fabrication [4,5]. We have used this to perform sensing of both static and oscillating magnetic and electric fields near the chip surface, and more recently demonstrated multi-qubit gates and control of multi-dimensional arrays of ions.

[1] K. Mehta et al. Nature 586, 533–537 (2018)

[2] A. Ricci et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 133201 (2023)

[3] C. Mordini et al. Physical Review X 15, 011040 (2025)

[4] S. Jain et al. Physical Review X 10, 031027 (2021)

[5] S. Jain et al. Nature 627, 8004, pp. 510–514 (2024)