Bulk micro-machined wide-band aero-acoustic microphone and its application to acoustic ranging

Abstract

A wide-band aero-acoustic microphone was realized using a bulk micro-machining process based on the deep reactive-ion etching of silicon. The sensing diaphragm is completely sealed, thus eliminating the loss of low-frequency response resulting from pressure equalization through the release etch-holes present on the diaphragm of a previously reported microphone implemented using a surface-micro-machining process. A dynamic sensitivity of ∼0.33 µV/V/Pa was estimated using an acoustic shockwave (‘N-wave’) generated using a custom-built high-voltage electrical spark-discharge system. This value is comparable to the effective static sensitivity of ∼0.28 µV/V/Pa measured using a commercial nano-indenter system. The response of the microphone is relatively flat from 6 to 500 kHz, with a resonance frequency of ∼715 kHz. An array of three microphones was also constructed and tested to demonstrate the application of these microphones to the localization of high frequency and short duration acoustic sources.