  Trapped ions for quantum information processing has been an area of intense
study due to the extraordinarily high fidelity operations that have been
reported experimentally. Specifically, barium trapped ions have been shown to
have exceptional state-preparation and measurement (SPAM) fidelities. The
$^{133}\mathrm{Ba}^+$ ($I = 1/2$) isotope in particular is a promising
candidate for large-scale quantum computing experiments. However, a major
pitfall with this isotope is that it is radioactive and is thus generally used
in microgram quantities to satisfy safety regulations. We describe a new method
for creating microgram barium chloride ($\mathrm{BaCl}_2$) ablation targets for
use in trapped ion experiments and compare our procedure to previous methods.
We outline two recipes for fabrication of ablation targets that increase the
production of neutral atoms for isotope-selective loading of barium ions. We
show that heat-treatment of the ablation targets greatly increases the
consistency at which neutral atoms can be produced and we characterize the
uniformity of these targets using trap-independent techniques such as energy
dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and neutral fluorescence collection. Our
comparison between fabrication techniques and demonstration of consistent
neutral fluorescence paves a path towards reliable loading of
$^{133}\mathrm{Ba}^+$ in surface traps and opens opportunities for scalable
quantum computing with this isotope.
