Micro electro mechanical system microphone design, process developmnet and test methodology

Abstract

This thesis is a quest to design, fabricate and characterize a MEMS microphone.The investigations done as part of the thesis not only include the design of the microphone, but the manufacturability challenges and test issues as well. The motivation behind covering the breadth of issues in this thesis has been driven by development of a MEMS process for existing CMOS and BiCMOS processes.

One of the constraints in adding MEMS capability was that no additional fabrication tools could be added to the regular CMOS and BiCMOS process flow. In addition, no new chemistry could be introduced as it would require additional cost. Therefore, study of the fabrication and developing a new fabrication process was a part of the challenge. The thesis covers the following topics of Introduction, Principles of Design, Process Development, Testing Methodology, Results and finally Conclusion and Future Work.