Influence of microphone housing on the directional response of piezoelectric mems microphones inspired by Ormia ochracea

The influence of custom microphone housings on the acoustic directionality and frequency response of a multiband bio-inspired MEMS microphone is presented. The 3.2 mm by 1.7 mm piezoelectric MEMS microphone, fabricated by a cost-effective multi-user process, has four frequency bands of operation below 10 kHz, with a desired first-order directionality for all four bands. 7×7×2.5 mm3 3-D-printed bespoke housings with varying acoustic access to the backside of the microphone membrane are investigated through simulation and experiment with respect to their influence on the directionality and frequency response to sound stimulus. Results show a clear link between directionality and acoustic access to the back cavity of the microphone. Furthermore, there was a change in direction of the first-order directionality with reduced height in this back cavity acoustic access. The required configuration for creating an identical directionality for all four frequency bands is investigated along with the influence of reducing the symmetry of the acoustic back cavity access. This paper highlights the overall requirement of considering housing geometries and their influence on acoustic behavior for bio-inspired directional microphones

A low frequency dual-band operational microphone mimicking the hearing property of Ormia ochracea

This paper introduces a directional MEMS microphone designed for hearing aid applications appropriate to low frequency hearing impairment, inspired by the hearing mechanism of a fly, the female Ormia ochracea. It uses both piezoelectric and capacitive sensing schemes. In order to obtain a high sensitivity at low frequency bands, the presented microphone is designed to have two resonance frequencies below the threshold of low frequency hearing loss at approximately 2 kHz. One is around 500 Hz and the other is slightly above 2 kHz. The novel dual sensing mechanism allows for optimization of the microphone sensitivity at both frequencies, with a maximum open-circuit (excluding pre-amplification) acoustic response captured via differential piezoelectric sensing at approximately – 46 dB (V) ref. 94 dB (SPL) at the resonance frequencies. The corresponding minimum detectable sound pressure level is just below -12 dB. The comb finger capacitive sensing was employed due to a lower electrical response generated from a ground referenced single-ended output by the piezoelectric sensing at the first resonance frequency compared to the second resonance frequency. The capacitive sensing mechanism, connected to a charge amplifier, generates a -28.4 dB (V) ref. 94 dB (SPL) acoustic response when the device is excited at either of the two resonance frequencies. Due to the asymmetric geometry and the 400 µm thick substrate, the device is predicted to perform as a bi-directional microphone below 3 kHz, which is shown by the measured directional polar patterns

Design And Fabrication of Condenser Microphone Using Wafer Transfer And Micro-electroplating Technique

A novel fabrication process, which uses wafer transfer and micro-electroplating technique, has been proposed and tested. In this paper, the effects of the diaphragm thickness and stress, the air-gap thickness, and the area ratio of acoustic holes to backplate on the sensitivity of the condenser microphone have been demonstrated since the performance of the microphone depends on these parameters. The microphone diaphragm has been designed with a diameter and thickness of 1.9 mm and 0.6 $\mu$m, respectively, an air-gap thickness of 10 $\mu$m, and a 24% area ratio of acoustic holes to backplate. To obtain a lower initial stress, the material used for the diaphragm is polyimide. The measured sensitivities of the microphone at the bias voltages of 24 V and 12 V are -45.3 and -50.2 dB/Pa (at 1 kHz), respectively. The fabricated microphone shows a flat frequency response extending to 20 kHz.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/16838

Survey of Sensor Technology for Aircraft Cabin Environment Sensing

The aircraft cabin environment is unique due to the proximity of the passengers, the need for cabin pressurization, and the low humidity. All of these aspects are complicated by the fact that the aircraft is a semi-enclosed structure. There is an increased desire to monitor the aircraft cabin environment with various sensors for comfort and safety. However, the aircraft cabin environment is composed of a large number of factors. Some of these factors can include air quality, temperature, level of pressurization, and motion of the aircraft. Therefore, many types of sensors must be used to monitor aircraft environments. A variety of technology options are often available for each sensor. Consequently, a fair number of tradeoffs need to be carefully considered when designing a sensor monitoring system for the aircraft cabin environment. For instance, a system designer may need to decide if the increased accuracy of a sensor using a particular technology is worth the increased power consumption over a similar sensor employing a more efficient, less accurate technology. In order to achieve a good solution, a designer needs to understand the tradeoffs and general operation for all of the different sensor technologies that could be used in the design. The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey of the current sensor technology. The primary focus of this paper is on sensors and technologies that cover the most common aspects of aircraft cabin environment monitoring. The first half of this paper details the basic operation of different sensor technologies. The second half covers the individual environmental conditions which need to be sensed. This will include the benefits, limitations, and applications of the different technologies available for each particular type of sensor

Modeling and Characterization of A Pull-in Free MEMS Microphone

In this study, we examine the feasibility of designing a MEMS microphone employing a levitation based electrode configuration. This electrode scheme enables capacitive MEMS sensors that could work for large bias voltages without pullin failure. Our experiments and simulations indicate that it is possible to create robust sensors properly working at high DC voltages, which is not feasible for most of the conventional parallel plate electrode-based micro-scale devices. In addition, the use of larger bias voltages will improve signal-to-noise ratios in MEMS sensors because it increases the signal relative to the noise in read-out circuits. This study presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a capacitive microphone, which is made of approximately 2 m thick highly-doped polysilicon as a diaphragm. It has approximately 1 mm 2 surface area and incorporates interdigitated sensing electrodes on three of its sides. Right underneath these moving electrodes, there are fixed fingers having held at the same voltage potential as the moving electrodes and separated from them with a 2 m thick air gap. The electronic output is obtained using a charge amplifier. Measured results obtained on three different microphone chips using bias voltages up to 200 volts indicate that pull-in failure is completely avoided. The sensitivity of this initial design was measured to be 16.1 mV/Pa at 200 V bias voltage, and the bandwidth was from 100 Hz to 4.9 kHz

3중 샘플링 방식 델타-시그마 ADC를 이용한 디지털 Capacitive MEMS 마이크로폰

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2022. 8. 김수환.본 논문에서는 트리플 샘플링 적분기를 사용한 Capacitive 방식의 MEMS 마이크로폰이 제시되었다. 트리플 샘플링은 델타-시그마 방식의 아날로그-디지털 변환기의 첫 번째 적분기에 사용되었고 크게 두 가지의 동작으로 구분된다. 첫 번째로 적분기의 입력에서 반주기 지연 차동 입력을 빼서 신호 크기를 2배로 만들는 방식. 두 번째로 DAC의 피드백 커패시터를 샘플링 커패시터로 사용하여 입력 전압을 추가로 증가시키는 방식이다. 추가적으로 기존에서 샘플링 커패시터를 증가시켜 신호의 크기를 증폭시키는 방식과 결합하여 실수배의 이득을 얻을 수 있다. 또한 추가적인 커패시터, 타이밍, 전류 소모 없이 구조 변경만으로 이를 달성하였기 때문에 별다른 trade-off 없이 신호의 크기를 증폭시킬 수 있었다. 추가적으로 트리플 샘플링 방식의 적분기 신호 전달 함수 및 잡음 분석 또한 포함하였다. 우리의 readout 회로는 공급 전압이 1.8V인 0.18 m CMOS 공정으로 구현하였고 single-ended capacitive MEMS 트랜스듀서를 사용하여 측정하였다. 전류 소모량은 520 μA 이다. 마이크로폰은 A-weighted 신호 대 잡음 비는 62.1 dBA, 음향 과부하 지점은 115 dB SPL을 달성하였고 칩의 die size는 0.98〖"mm" 〗^2 이다.A triple-sampling ΔΣ ADC can replace the programmable-gain amplifier commonly used in the readout circuit for a digital capacitive MEMS microphone. The input voltage can then be multiplied by subtracting a further half-period delayed differential input and using the feedback capacitor of the DAC as a sampling capacitor. This triple-sampling technique results in a readout circuit with sensitivity and noise performance comparable to recent designs, but with a reduced power requirement. CMRR improvement is achieved by subtracting differential inputs and superior noise performance compare to conventional structure, as amplifier noise and DAC kT/C noise is not amplified by triple-sampling structure while the signal is increased by its gain. Triple-sampling also can be operated as a single-to-differential circuit. A MEMS microphone incorporating this readout circuit, fabricated in a 0.18μm CMOS process, achieved an A-weighted SNR of 62.1 dBA at 94 dB SPL with 520 μA current consumption, to which triple-sampling was shown to contribute 4.5 dBA.CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 MOTIVATION 1 1.1.1 MEMS MICROPHONE TRENDS 1 1.1.2 TYPE OF MEMS MICROPHONES 4 1.1.3 PREVIOUS WORKS 7 1.2 MEMS MICROPHONE BASIC TERMS 9 1.3 THESIS ORGANIZATION 12 CHAPTER 2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW 13 2.1 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE 13 CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE CIRCUITS AND POWER MANAGEMENT CIRCUITS 16 3.1 PSEUDO-DIFFERENTIAL SOURCE FOLLOWER 17 3.2 CHARGE PUMP 19 3.3 LOW DROPOUT REGULATOR 22 3.3.1 DESIGN CONSIDERATION OF LOW DROPOUT REGULATOR 22 3.3.2 IMPLEMENTATION OF LOW DROPOUT REGULATOR 26 CHAPTER 4 TRIPLE-SAMPLING DELTA-SIGMA ADC 31 4.1 BASIC OF DELTA-SIGMA ADC 31 4.2 IMPLEMENTATION OF TRIPLE-SAMPLING DELTA-SIGMA MODULATOR 37 4.2.1 CONVENTIONAL 1ST INTEGRATOR STRUCTURE 37 4.2.2 CROSS-SAMPLING 1ST INTEGRATOR 40 4.2.3 TRIPLE-SAMPLING 1ST INTEGRATOR 43 4.2.4 STF ANALYSIS OF TRIPLE-SAMPLING 1ST INTEGRATOR 47 4.2.5 THERMAL NOISE ANALYSIS OF TRIPLE-SAMPLING 1ST INTEGRATOR 51 4.2 CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION OF DELTA-SIGMA ADC 57 CHAPTER 5 MEASUREMENT RESULTS 64 5.1 MEASUREMENT ENVIRONMENT 64 5.2 MEASUREMENT RESULTS 67 5.3 PERFORMANCE SUMMARY 72 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION 74 BIBLIOGRAPHY 76 한글초록 79박

Ultra-sensitive graphene membranes for microphone applications

Microphones exploit the motion of suspended membranes to detect sound waves. Since the microphone performance can be improved by reducing the thickness and mass of its sensing membrane, graphene-based microphones are expected to outperform state-of-the-art microelectromechanical (MEMS) microphones and allow further miniaturization of the device. Here, we present a laser vibrometry study of the acoustic response of suspended multilayer graphene membranes for microphone applications. We address performance parameters relevant for acoustic sensing, including mechanical sensitivity, limit of detection and nonlinear distortion, and discuss the trade-offs and limitations in the design of graphene microphones. We demonstrate superior mechanical sensitivities of the graphene membranes, reaching more than 2 orders of magnitude higher compliances than commercial MEMS devices, and report a limit of detection as low as 15 dBSPL, which is 10 - 15 dB lower than that featured by current MEMS microphones.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, 7 supplementary figure

Aerodynamic behavior of the bridge of a capacitive RF MEMS switch

This paper was presented at the 4th Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2014), which was held at University College, London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute, ASME Press, LCN London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL University College London, UCL Engineering, the International NanoScience Community, www.nanopaprika.eu.The present paper proposes a coupled 3D multi-physics model and presents the results of its transient simulation, for a RF MEMS capacitive switch of bridge-type. The fluid structure interaction (FSI) simulation sustains time-varying viscous damping and modified time response of the bridge deflection compared to the actuation modulation above closing of the switch. Complex 3D geometries of the bridge were rarely taken into account in viscous damping assessment much less in the simulation of the full flow around the bridge of the switch. The final goal of the paper is to obtain the dependency of an equivalent damping coefficient with respect to time, to be used in subsequent reduced order models for the switch, that include the aerodynamic behaviour of the switch