Slotted capacitive microphone with sputtered aluminum diaphragm and photoresist sacrificial layer

In this paper, we have fabricated a new microphone using aluminum (Al) slotted perforated diaphragm and back plate electrode, and photoresist (AZ1500) sacrificial layer on silicon wafer. The novelty of this method relies on aluminum diaphragm includes some slots to reduce the effect of residual stress and stiffness of diaphragm for increasing the microphone sensitivity. The acoustic holes are made on diaphragm to reduce the air damping, and avoid the disadvantages of non standard silicon processing for making back chamber and holes in back plate, which are more complex and expensive. Photoresist sacrificial layer is easy to deposition by spin coater and also easy to release by acetone. Moreover, acetone has a high selectivity to resist compared to silicon oxide and Al, thus it completely removes sacrificial resist without incurring significant damage silicon oxide and Al. The measured zero bias capacitance is 17.5 pF, and its pull-in voltage is 25 V. The microphone has been tested with external amplifier and speaker, the external amplifier was able to detect the sound waves from microphone on speaker and oscilloscope. The maximum amplitude of output speech signal of amplifier is 45 mV, and the maximum output of MEMS microphone is 1.125 μV.     

High sensitivity and small size MEMS capacitive microphone using a novel slotted diaphragm

A novel single-chip microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) capacitive microphone with a slotted diaphragm for sound sensing is developed to minimize the microphone size and improve the sensitivity by decreasing the mechanical stiffness of the diaphragm. The behaviors of the microphones with clamped and slotted diaphragms are analyzed using the finite element method (FEM). According to the results, a clamped microphone with a 2.43 × 2.43 mm² diaphragm and a slotted one with a 1.5 × 1.5 mm² diaphragm have the same mechanical sensitivity, but the size of slotted microphone is at least 1.62 times smaller than clamped structure. The results also yield a sensitivity of 5.33 × 10⁻⁶ pF/Pa for the clamped and 3.87 × 10⁻⁵ pF/Pa for the slotted microphone with a 0.5 × 0.5 mm² diaphragm. The sensitivity of the slotted diaphragm is increased 7.27 times. The pull-in voltage of the clamped microphone is 105 V, and slotted one is 49 V. The pull-in voltage of the slotted microphone is about 53% decreased.     

Design and fabrication of a new MEMS capacitive microphone using a perforated aluminum diaphragm

In this paper, a novel single-chip MEMS capacitive microphone is presented. The novelties of the method relies on the moveable aluminum (Al) diaphragm positioned over the backplate electrode, where the diaphragm includes a plurality of holes to allow the air in the gap between the electrode and the diaphragm to escape and thus reducing acoustical damping in the microphone. Spin-on-glass (SOG) was used as a sacrificial and isolating layer. Backplate is monocrystalline silicon wafer, that it is more stiff. This work will focus on design, simulation, fabrication and characterization of the microphone. The structure has a diaphragm thickness of 3 μm, a diaphragm size of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm, and an air gap of 1.0 μm. The results show that the pull-in voltage is 105 V, the initial stress of evaporated aluminum diaphragm is around 1500 MPa and the zero bias capacitance of microphone is 2.12 pF. Comparing with the previous works, this microphone has several advantages: the holes have been made on diaphragm, therefore no need of KOH etching to make back chamber, in this way the chip size of each microphone is reduced. The fabrication process uses minimal number of layers and masks to reduce the fabrication cost.     

工业化硅微机械电容式麦克风的设计与性能计算

给出了一种单芯片硅微机械电容式麦克风的结构设计,并针对此结构对其进行了动态特性分析计算。硅微机械电容式麦克风的两个电极由一个复合敏感膜和一个金属铜底板构成。复合敏感膜包括三层,中间一层是掺杂硼的多晶硅,上下两层是氮化硅,三层复合膜的厚度设计和制作工艺使复合膜处于轻微的拉应力状态。底板采用低温电镀铜技术制作,底板上分布有许多圆形通气孔来调节敏感膜与底板间的空气压膜阻尼。在复合敏感膜和金属铜底板之间采用牺牲层技术制作了一空气间隙,使复合敏感膜和一个金属铜底板之间构成一工作电容。在硅基体的背面采用湿法腐蚀出声音进口腔。针对这一结构我们对其动态特性进行了分析计算,计算出麦克风在9V偏置电压下开环灵敏度为4.99mV/Pa,麦克风最大偏置电压为32.83V,麦克风工作时的频率带宽为0~134kHz。分析结果表明该硅微机械电容式麦克风能满足工业界的使用要求。     

A Micromachined Dual-Backplate Capacitive Microphone for Aeroacoustic Measurements

This paper presents the development of a micro-machined dual-backplate capacitive microphone for aeroacoustic measurements. The device theory, fabrication, and characterization are discussed. The microphone is fabricated using the five-layer planarized-polysilicon SUMMiT V process at Sandia National Laboratories. The microphone consists of a 0.46-mm-diameter 2.25-mum-thick circular diaphragm and two circular backplates. The diaphragm is separated from each backplate by a 2-mum air gap. Experimental characterization of the microphone shows a sensitivity of 390 muV/Pa. The dynamic range of the microphone interfaced with a charge amplifier extends from the noise floor of 41 dB/ radicHz up to 164 dB and the resonant frequency is 178 kHz.     

圆形振动膜硅微电容传声器

硅微传声器是一种用MEMS技术制造的、将声信号转换为电信号的声学传感器.该传声器只需五次光刻工艺即可制作完成,其灵敏度在偏置电压为9V时可达15mV/Pa左右,在100Hz～18kHz的范围内的频率响应也较平坦.     

A MEMS surface fence for wall shear stress measurement with high sensitivity

In this paper, an optimized micro-fabricated surface fence with high sensitivity is presented for measurement of wall shear stress. In order to improve the bending stress and thereby enhance the sensitivity of the sensor, the cantilever structure of sensor (the sensing element) is designed and optimized by optimization analysis and orthogonal experimental design. Several sensors are fabricated using the micromachining technology with the sensing element having a width of 5 mm, a thickness of 20 μm and a height of either 2,200 or 1,700 μm. Calibration against a Preston Tube over a range of approximately ±0.7 Pa demonstrates that the sensors have sensitivity extended up to 2.3 mV/(V·Pa), at least 13 % improvement in sensitivity compared to the previous MEMS surface fence with the same thickness of sensing element. The paper also introduces an acoustic excitation method to detect the resonant frequency of the MEMS surface fence, which features a very little deviation compared with the modal FE-analysis.     

Silicon microphone development and application

This paper gives an overview of the development of Silicon microphones fabricated in a standard BiCMOS process line of Infineon. MEMS development results in reliable processes for high sensitivity poly-silicon membranes. Microphones with sensitivity up to −39 dB V/Pa at 2 V bias and a signal to noise ratio of up to 65 dB(A) are presented. The impact of packaging on the product design is described. As an example a directional microphone with cardioid response and backward noise suppression of 19 dB is described.     

“中国微米纳米”一种低温制备的高灵敏度MEMS电容传声器

MEMS传声器是将声音信号转换成电信号的传感器.目前,MEMS传声器的研究主要涉及 MEMS电容传声器和MEMS压电传声器压阻传感器2种.与其它类型的MEMS传声器相比,MEMS电容传声器具有高灵敏度、高信噪比、频率响应平坦、低温度系数等突出的优点,被广泛使用在便携式设备、多媒体系统、助听器、信息采集等方面.设计和制备了一种高灵敏度的MEMS电容传声器,而且制备器件的工艺温度最高为300 ℃,可以兼容IC工艺.在本文,利用牺牲层的方法实现圆形振动薄膜,避免了方形薄膜存在的应力集中问题,并克服了干法制备圆形薄膜成本高的问题.基于聚酰亚胺材料,优化成膜工艺参数,实现低应力的圆形振动薄膜.通过设计防粘连结构,避免器件释放干燥过程中出现的薄膜粘连问题.根据振动膜应力为5 MPa,半径为2.5 mm,厚度为1 μm,电极半径为380 μm,间隙为1 μm的设计参数进行理论计算,该器件的电容在1 Pa 声压下的变化量为千分之一.与市场流通的MEMS传声器相比,高出约一个数量级,可被用于远场拾音,从信噪比极低的环境中拾取关键的声音信息.     

Design and fabrication of silicon condenser microphone usingcorrugated diaphragm technique

A novel silicon condenser microphone with a corrugated diaphragm has been proposed, designed, fabricated and tested. The microphone is fabricated on a single wafer by use of silicon anisotropic etching and sacrificial layer etching techniques, so that no bonding techniques are required. The introduction of corrugations has greatly increased the mechanical sensitivities of the microphone diaphragms due to the reduction of the initial stress in the thin films, For the purpose of further decreasing the thin film stress, composite diaphragms consisting of multilayer (polySi/Si_xN_y/polySi) materials have been fabricated, reducing the initial stress to a much lower level of about 70 MPa in tension. Three types of corrugation placements and several corrugation depths in a diaphragm area of 1 mm² have been designed and fabricated. Microphones with flat frequency response between 100 Hz and 8~16 kHz and open-circuit sensitivities as high as 8.1~14.2 mV/Pa under the bias voltages of 10~25 V have been fabricated in a reproducible way. The experimental results proved that the corrugation technique is promising for silicon condenser microphone     

Design of SAW sensor for longitudinal strain measurement with improved sensitivity

This paper presents the design of a highly sensitive surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based sensor with novel structure for the longitudinal strain measurement. The sensor utilizes thin lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) diaphragm as the sensing element rather than the bulk substrate. The application of the diaphragm effectively decreases the cross-sectional area of the strain sensitive element, and meanwhile reduces the resistance between the sensor and the specimen. The newly designed strain sensor is to operate around a frequency of 50 MHz. The insertion loss of − 12 dB and quality factor of 63 are obtained analytically from impulse-response model. The sensor performance with tensile testing of the steel beam is predicted by the finite element method. The prestressed eigenfrequency analysis is conducted with the COMSOL commercial software. The simulation shows the resonance frequency of the sensor shifts linearly with the strain induced in the testing beam. For the SAW sensor with traditional configuration applying 1 mm thick substrate, the strain sensitivity is obtained as 0.41 ppm/με. For the sensor with the novel design employing thin diaphragm with the thickness of 200 μm, the strain sensitivity is increased to 0.83 ppm/με. With the availability of the bulk micromachining of LiNbO₃, the application of the piezoelectric diaphragm as sensing element in SAW strain sensor can be an alternative way to enhance the sensor sensitivity.

     

Miniaturization and integration of photoacoustic detection with amicrofabricated chemical reactor system

Photoacoustic spectroscopy is a useful technique for monitoring chemical composition in mesoscale analysis systems because the detection limit scales favorably with miniaturization. The key element of a photoacoustic spectrometry system is the detector. This work focuses on the miniaturization of photoacoustic detection. In particular, we are using 3.4 μm light to detect propane in a carbon dioxide background-a system that is useful for monitoring combustion reactions. Two systems have been developed. In the first, a miniature photoacoustic cell has been machined into the mounting block of a microfabricated chemical reactor, demonstrating the integration of a photoacoustic detector with a microsystem. The cell used a hearing aid microphone and an infrared diode that was modulated at the first acoustic resonance of the cell. As the gas composition of the cell changed from carbon dioxide to propane the resonance peak was observed to shift and increase, as was expected from theory. This work also presents the first demonstration of a microfabricated photoacoustic detection cell. The cell used an optical microphone and laser excitation brought into the cell via an optical fiber. The light was modulated at a frequency far below the first acoustic resonance, and a signal of 0.05 Pa was observed in the presence of propane     

A new hybrid fabrication process for a high sensitivity MEMS microphone

A novel multi-layer stacking capacitive type microphone is designed in this study based on theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, while fabricated via two standard stable silicon-based MEMS processes—PolyMUMPs and SOIMUMPs. The adoption of two standardized processes helps greatly to increase yield rate. The sensitivity of the microphone is first determined by an analytical model based on an equivalent circuit, which is followed by finite element (FEM) analyses on the capacitance value, static pull-in voltage and dynamic characteristics. Based on the developed analytical model, varied dimensions of the microphone are optimized and then the performance is validated by analytical simulations. In the next step, micro-fabrication of the microphone is accomplished using two standard processes, PolyMUMPs and SOIMUMPs provided by MEMSCAP. Experiments are conducted to acquire the information of pull-in voltage for safe operation and frequency response in sensitivity for performance evaluation. In the static case, experimental results show a good agreement with the analytical results with 90 Mpa residual stress assumed. As for dynamic validation, the frequency response is measured in an anechoic room adopting the exciting frequency as the audible range from 100–10 kHz. The measured sensitivity is as around 0.78 and 1.7 mV/Pa from 100 to 10 kHz, under the biases of 2 and 4.5 V, respectively. Within the audible frequency range, the proposed device maintains the loss as less as 2.7 dB (ref. to V/Pa), under 3 dB—the commonly acceptable drop within audible frequency range.     

Surface and Bulk-Silicon-Micromachined Optical Displacement Sensor Fabricated With the SwIFT-Lite™ Process

For many micromachined sensors such as microphones and accelerometers, optical displacement sensing may have advantages over capacitive sensing—offering potentially high-displacement sensitivity independent of sensor area and gap height. A particular diffraction-based optical displacement sensor design consisting of a sensing diaphragm suspended over a rigid grated electrode has demonstrated advantages in terms of sensitivity, integration and stability. When illuminated from the backside, this structure generates a zeroth and complementary higher order diffracted beams whose intensities are modulated by the diaphragm displacement with the sensitivity of a regular Michelson interferometer. In previous work, acoustic devices surface micromachined on quartz substrates using aluminum for the diaphragm and grating were presented and characterized. In this work, we present the fabrication and characterization of a surface- and bulk-silicon micromachined diffraction-based optical microphone structure fabricated with Sandia National Laboratories' SwIFT-Lite™ process, which uses silicon nitride and polysilicon structural materials that have been employed extensively in MEMS and form a more thermally matched material set robust against corrosion and fatigue. The process introduces a new design space to microscale optical displacement sensing, enabling large, soft structures with perforated back-plates ideal for microphone and inertial-sensor designs.1599     

Piezoelectric microphone with on-chip CMOS circuits

An IC-processed piezoelectric microphone with on-chip, large-scale integrated (LSI) CMOS circuits has been designed, fabricated, and tested in a joint, interactive process between a commercial CMOS foundry and a university micromachining facility. The 2500×2500×3.5 μm ³ microphone has a piezoelectric ZnO layer on a supporting low-pressure chemical-vapor-deposited (LPCVD), silicon-rich, silicon nitride layer. The optimum residual-stress-compensation scheme for maximizing microphone sensitivity produces a slightly buckled microphone diaphragm. A model for the sensitivity dependence of device operation to residual stress is confirmed by applying external strain. The packaged microphone has a resonant frequency of 18 kHz, a quality factor Q≈40, and an unamplified sensitivity of 0.92 mV/Pa. Differential amplifiers provide 49 dB gain with 13 μV A-weighted noise at the input     

A novel MEMS capacitive microphone using spring-type diaphragm

Microsystem Technologies - In this paper, we present a new design of diaphragm that supported by frog arms for MEMS capacitive microphone structure. The proposed diaphragm reduces the air damping...     

A MEMS guide plate for a high temperature testing of a wafer level packaged die wafer

This paper describes the design and fabrication of a MEMS guide plate, which was used for a vertical probe card to test a wafer level packaged die wafer. The size of the fabricated MEMS guide plate was 10.6 × 10.6 cm. The MEMS guide plate consisted of 8,192 holes to insert pogo pins, and four holes for bolting between the guide plate and the housing. To insert pogo pins easily, an inclined plane was defined at the back of each hole. Pitch and diameter of the hole were 650 and 260 μm, respectively. In order to define inserting holes and inclined planes at an exact position, silicon MEMS technology was used such as anisotropic etching, deep reactive etching and more. Silicon was used as the material of the guide plate to reduce alignment mismatch between the pogo pins and solder bumps during a high temperature testing. A combined probe card with the fabricated MEMS guide plate showed good x–y alignment and planarity errors within ±9 and ±10 μm at room temperature, respectively. In addition, x–y alignment and planarity are ±20 and ±16 μm at 125°C, respectively. The proposed MEMS guide plate can be applied to a vertical probe card for burn-in testing of a wafer level packaged die wafer because the thermal expansion coefficient of the MEMS guide plate and die wafer is same.     

基于M-Z动态干涉仪的全光纤麦克风研究

设计了一种新型的全光纤干涉型型麦克风.通过构造由光纤耦合器和镀铝振膜组成的动态M-Z干涉光路,将外界声压对振膜的作用转化为对光路相位的调制,得到的输出光信号光电转换后可直接提取出原声音信号.整个光路和光纤探头部分无任何电的参与,具有抗电磁干扰、尺寸小、灵敏度高等优点.并通过实验对该光纤麦克风进行了测试,得到了较好的实验结果.     

反射强度调制式光纤声音传感器优化设计与研究

反射强度调制式光纤声音传感器具有结构简单、灵敏度高、抗电磁场和射频干扰等优点。对反射式光纤声音传感器膜片的振动特性进行了理论推导和有限元分析,得出振动膜片几何参数和振动特性之间的关系及其膜片的设计方法。设计了结构简单的传感器探头,并以1310 nm波长的激光器为光源研制了光纤声音传感器。对所研制的光纤声音传感器进行了实验研究,实验测得传感器的频响为350 Hz~7.5 kHz;灵敏度为416.7mV/Pa。     

A study on controllable aluminium doped zinc oxide patterning by chemical etching for MEMS application

This present work reports on the study of controllable aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) patterning by chemical etching for MEMS application. The AZO thin film was prepared by RF magnetron sputtering as it is capable of producing uniform thin film at high deposition rates. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) characterization were done to characterize AZO thin film. The sputtered AZO thin film shows c-axis (002) orientation, low surface roughness and high crystalline quality. To pattern AZO thin film for MEMS application, wet etching was chosen due to its ease of processing with few controlling parameters. Four etching solutions were used namely: 10 % Nitric acid, 10 % Phosphoric acid, 10 % Acetic acid and Molybdenum etch solutions. For the first time, chemical etching using Molybdenum etch that consist of a mixture of CH₃COOH, HNO₃ and H₃PO₄ was characterized and reported. The effect of these acidic solutions on the undercut etching, vertical and lateral etch rate were studied. The etched AZO were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and stylus profilometer. The investigations showed that the Molybdenum etch has the lowest undercut etching of 7.11 µm, and is highly effective in terms of lateral and vertical etching with an etch ratio of 1.30. Successful fine patterning of AZO thin films was demonstrated at device level on a surface acoustic wave resonator fabricated in 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The AZO thin film acts as the piezoelectric thin film for acoustic wave generation. Patterning of the AZO thin film is necessary for access to measurement probe pads. The working acoustic resonator showed resonance peak at 1.044 GHz at 45.28 dB insertion loss indicating that the proposed Molybdenum etch method does not adversely affect the device’s operating characteristics.