A micromachined thin-film Teflon electret microphone

This paper reports the fabrication and characterization of the first micromachined one-micron-thick thin-film Teflon electret condenser microphone. The microphone uses a new MEMS-compatible thin-film Teflon electret technology, first reported at Hilton Head (1996). The millimeter-scale electret microphone has very low stray capacitance, is self-biasing, mass producible, arrayable, integrable with on-chip electronics, structurally simple and extremely stable over time in the ordinary environment. The dynamic range is from 60 to above 110 dB SPL (re. 20 /spl mu/Pa) and the sensitivity is on the order of 0.2 mV/Pa over the frequency range 100 Hz-10 kHz.