DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF AN INTEGRATED

PROGRAMMABLE FLOATING-GATE MICROPHONE

Tengge Ma, Tsz Yin Man, Yick Chuen Chan*, Yitshak Zohar* and Man Wong

Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, *Department of Mechanical Engineering

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Instead of an electret [2], an electrically insulated

conducting floating-gate is used as one of the
An integrated, programmable floating-gate capacitor plates in the microphone to generate the
capacitive microphone has been designed and desired permanent electric field and as the gate of the
fabricated. The conducting floating-gate is read-out transistor. The electrons on the floating-gate
electrically insulated and is “programmed” by are electrically injected and replenished using
injecting electrons into it using Fowler-Nordheim Fowler-Nordheim (FN) tunneling mechanism. A
tunneling through a thin silicon dioxide film, thus simple buffer circuit is integrated to reduce the
capable of simulating an electret and generating a parasitic capacitance. Obviously, more sophisticated
permanent electric field. A current-driving buffer signal-processing circuits can be incorporated, since
based on metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect the process is intrinsically MOS compatible.
transistors is integrated to reduce the capacitive
loading of the microphone. The fabrication process is MODELLING AND SIMULATIONS
MOS compatible and promises the potential of
integrating a variety of signal processing electronic The voltage necessary for FN tunneling of electrons
circuits. into the floating-gate (Vf) is induced by a bias (Vc)
applied to the counter-electrode (control-gate) of the
INTRODUCTION sensing capacitor. The efficiency of the voltage
transfer is parameterized by the coupling ratio (Vf/Vc).
Miniaturized microphones can be found in a range of The electrical equivalent circuit of the floating-gate
applications such as cell phones, hearing aids, smart microphone is shown in Figure 1.
toys and surveillance devices, etc. Allowing batch
fabrication and integration of miniaturized devices
with different functions, micro-fabrication is
uniquely suitable for realizing inexpensive
micro-systems with enhanced capabilities. Several
types of silicon microphones, such as piezo-electric,
piezo-resistive and capacitive (including electret)
microphones [1] have been investigated.

Higher sensitivity is the principal advantage of

capacitive over piezo-electric and piezo-resistive
sensing. Furthermore, if permanent storage of
charges were possible, as in an electret capacitor, Figure 1. An electrical equivalent circuit of the
external biasing network could be eliminated. integrated floating-gate microphone.
Unfortunately, most electrets are incompatible with
the micro-fabrication of metal-oxide-semiconductor Cs, Ct and Cx represent respectively the capacitance
(MOS) devices, making it difficult to integrate associated with the sensing capacitor, the tunnel
electronic devices with electret microphones. A oxide and the input transistor of the current buffer.
further disadvantage is that most electret capacitors Ccb and Ccf are, respectively, the substrate to
are not electrically programmable, making it control-gate and the substrate to floating-gate
impossible to electrically regenerate any charges lost capacitance. Initially, the floating-gate is not charged,
after their initial storage on the capacitor.
(1) Qc Vc >C cb  Ct  C x  // Ccf  C s @,
The design, fabrication and characterization of an
integrated, programmable floating-gate capacitive (2) Qc Vc Ccb  Q f ,
microphone are presented. Its micro-fabrication is a
(3) Qf V f Ct  C x ,
one-wafer process requiring no wafer bonding.
0-7803-7185-2/02/$10.00 ©2002 IEEE 288
 where Qc and Qf are charges on the control-gate and been simulated using an electrical equivalent circuit,
the floating-gate, respectively. From (2) and (3), taking into account the contribution of the acoustic
pressure loading (P), the diaphragm, the air-gap, the
(4) Qc Vc C cb  V f Ct  C x . ventilation holes and the back-plate. The sensitivity
of the microphone is the output voltage (Vo) of the
sensing capacitor, before amplification, divided by P.
Equating (1) and (4), one obtains for the coupling
Six parameters have been considered in the design:
ratio
diaphragm area and thickness, air gap and back-plate
Vf Ccf  C s thickness, ventilation hole size and density. The
(5) .
Vc C cf  C s  Ct  C x performance of the device improves with increasing
diaphragm size (Fig. 2) and increasing ventilation
In the present implementation, Cs is the dominant hole density (Fig. 3).
capacitance and the coupling ratio can be made large
and close to 1. MICROPHONE FABRICATION

The major steps of the fabrication process for the

1 .2
microphone are illustrated in Figure 4.

d ia p h ra g m w id th = 4 m m
0 .9
Sensitivity (mV/Pa)

0 .6
3m m

0 .3

2m m

0 .0
1k 10k
F re q u e n c y (H z )

Figure 2. Simulated dependence of the frequency

response of the integrated floating-gate microphone
on membrane size.

1 .2 2 0 0 /m m 2

1 .0
1 0 0 /m m 2
Sensitivity (mV/Pa)

0 .8

0 .6
5 0 /m m 2

0 .4

0 .2
1k 10k
F re q u e n c y (H z )

Figure 3. Simulated dependence of the frequency

response of the integrated floating-gate microphone
on ventilation hole density.
Figure 4. Process flow for the integrated
The response of the floating-gate microphone has programmable floating-gate microphone.

0-7803-7185-2/02/$10.00 ©2002 IEEE 289

0-7803-7185-2/02/$10.00 ©2002 IEEE 290
0-7803-7185-2/02/$10.00 ©2002 IEEE 291