The Graphene Squeeze-Film Microphone

Abstract

Most microphones detect sound-pressure-induced motion of a membrane. In contrast, we introduce a microphone that operates by monitoring sound-pressure-induced modulation of the air compressibility. By driving a graphene membrane at resonance, the gas, that is trapped in a squeeze-film beneath it, is compressed at high frequency. Since the gas-film stiffness depends on the air pressure, the resonance frequency of the graphene is modulated by variations in sound pressure. We demonstrate that this squeeze-film microphone principle can be used to detect sound and music by tracking the membrane’s resonance frequency using a phase-locked loop. The squeeze-film microphone potentially offers advantages like increased dynamic range, lower susceptibility to pressure- induced failure and vibration-induced noise over conventional devices. Moreover, microphones might become much smaller, as demonstrated in this work with one that operates using a circular graphene membrane with an area that is more than 1000 times smaller than that of MEMS microphones.