Laser-cooling of atomic ions and sympathetic cooling of molecular ions is used today in many laboratories to prepare spatially ordered structures in various types of confinement fields. Trapping times can exceed minutes and temperatures below 10 mK have been reached.

The study of the structure and the dynamics of the single and multi species crystals is interesting in itself. In addition there are many applications in chemical , molecular and fundamental physics.

Examples include high precision spectroscopy, molecular quantum state preparation, multi-particle entanglement and quantum computing, quantum memory for light, internal coherence, and interactions with neutral particles. Coulomb crystals are also expected to play a role in astrophysics, e.g. if a White Dwarf cools down to at sufficiently ”low” temperatures, i.e. <10⁶ K.