Evaluation of Polymer Materials for MEMS Microphones

Polymers are attractive materials for the fabrication of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) microphones because of their low Young’s moduli, generally lower processing temperatures than silicon, and simple fabrication; such microphones are sensitive and economical. However, an earlier polymer diaphragm revealed lower sensitivity than expected. In addition, the viscoelastic properties of polymer diaphragm have been considered to degrade the sensing performance due to a high-level mechanical noise. Here, we investigated the possibility of the polymer material as a MEMS microphone in terms of stiffness and damping. Stiffness was analyzed and experimentally verified. The obtained polymer diaphragm damping coefficient was compared with the coefficient of a silicon MEMS microphone to explore whether performance was degraded by material damping. All samples were fabricated using a thin film transfer method. SU-8 was mainly used but Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) was also selected for comparing the material damping effect. The measured residual stress of an SU-8 diaphragm was 18 MPa; the measured flexibility was similar to the state-of-art of a silicon-based MEMS microphone, and it was proven that there is room for further improvement through process optimization. The damping effect induced by viscoelasticity was very small, compared with the effect of air damping; indeed, the intrinsic damping effect of the polymer on device performance was negligible. [2021-0213]