Refine
Document Type
- Article (2)
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Institute
This paper describes a novel method for trimming a low noise, differential micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) microphone with a state of the art signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 66 dB(A) and a sensitivity of -38 dBV/Pa @ 1 kHz after completing the fabrication process. The method allows compensating the electroacoustic variations caused by process tolerances and reducing specification limits of the microphone sensitivity from ±3 dB to ±0.5 dB. Trimming is done by programming the bias supply voltage of the capacitive membrane-backplate-system and the gain factor of the output pre-amplifier. Microphone sensitivity can be modified within a range of 11.2 dB. Thus the standard deviation of the sensitivity of a production batch could be reduced from 0.97 dB to 0.11 dB. Furthermore the SNR could be increased to 66.5 dB(A).
In this paper a new method for sensitivity recalibration of capacitive MEMS microphones is presented. Recalibration can be applied to compensate ageing or environmental influences. Recalibration can be done by measuring the sensitivity for only one bias voltage after a stress test. A microphone with a variable bias voltage can measure its pull-in voltage. Unfortunately, the drift of the pull-in voltage does not correlate with the sensitivity drift. So a true self-calibration without a defined acoustical test signal was impossible.