An electromagnetically actuated microspeaker with fully-integrated wax-bonded Nd-Fe-B micromagnets for hearing aid applications

Author

Je, Sang-Soo ; Wang, Naigang ; Brown, Henry C. ; Arnold, David P. ; Chae, Junseok

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

21-25 June 2009

Firstpage

885

Lastpage

888

Abstract

We present a fully-integrated, electromagnetically actuated microspeaker intended for hearing aid applications. The microspeaker uses the Lorentz force to actuate multi-turn, multi-layer copper coils embedded in a 3-mm-diameter parylene diaphragm. Process-compatible micromachined permanent magnets are employed for size reduction and batch-manufacturability. The permanent magnets are composed of micro-size Nd-Fe-B particles in a wax binder. The microspeaker produces 0.64 mum peak displacement at 1 kHz for a drive current of 88 mA_rms (6 Omega coil impedance), corresponding to a 46 mW power consumption.

Keywords

hearing aids; loudspeakers; permanent magnets; Lorentz force; electromagnetically actuated microspeaker; fully-integrated wax-bonded Nd-Fe-B micromagnets; hearing aid; multilayer copper coils; multiturn copper coils; process-compatible micromachined permanent magnets; Auditory system; Coils; Costs; Energy consumption; Loudspeakers; Magnetic flux; Magnetostatics; Permanent magnets; Power generation; Soft magnetic materials; MEMS; Nd-Fe-B permanent magnet; hearing aids; micromagnets; microspeaker;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference, 2009. TRANSDUCERS 2009. International

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4190-7

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4193-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SENSOR.2009.5285873

Filename

5285873