James A. Beall (Assoc)

Jim Beall is an Electronics Engineer in the Quantum Devices Group in the Quantum Electromagnetics Division of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at NIST. He has been working at NBS/NIST for over 40 years. His current research interests involve silicon micromachined waveguide structures and superconducting microdevice fabrication process development. Most recently he has led the design, process development and fabrication of micromachined silicon feedhorn and waveguide coupling structures for over 15 fielded microwave detector arrays including ACTpol, AdvACT, Toltec, SPIDER and Simons Observatory. He served as designer and project manager/interface for the construction of 4 clean room facilities at NIST, including the new NIST Boulder Microfabrication Facility and managed the procurement and installation of many large fabrication tools including furnaces, etchers and lithography tools. For several years he managed the Quantum Fabrication Facility. His earlier work included superconducting digital logic circuits, SQUIDs, YBCO thin film junctions and devices, tunable microwave devices, micromachined ion traps, TES detectors and development of photovoltaic devices, III-V tuned-infrared emitters and submicron tungsten-gate GaAs FETs.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Cosmic Microwave Background detector development
• Microwave feedhorn array development using silicon micromachining
• Silicon metamaterial lenslet fabrication
• Silicon micromachining process development

• National Institute of Standards and Technology Portrait Gallery (2022)
• U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medals (1989, 1993, 2012 and 2021)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology Bronze Medals (2004 and 2017)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology Colleagues’ Choice Award (2012)