Development of an electret microphone in silicon

We describe a subminiature electret microphone, which has been realized in silicon using wafer processing techniques. The microphone consists of a rigid backplate fabricated in silicon and a 2.5 μm thick metallized Mylar foil (PETP) acting as the diaphragm. Between the diaphragm and the backplate a 20 μm thick air cavity and a 1.1 μm thick charged SiO2 layer are present. The SiO2 layer is used as the electret and generates an electric field in the air gap. The electret has been changed to 300 V using a corona-charging set-up. The time constant of the charge decay amounts to more than 100 years at ambient laboratory conditions. The microphone cartridge, which measures 3 × 3 × 0.3 mm, shows an open-circuit sensitivity of about 2.5 mV/μbar at 1 kHz.