Since being bought by Bosch, Akustika, the silicon microphone specialist, has shrunk its microphone die by 30% to 0.7 sq. mm with both the CMOS circuitry and the MEMS structures contained on the same die.
That means the company can get 16,000 microphone die from one six inch wafer, Dr Stefan Finkbeimer, CEO of Akustika, told the Globalpress Summit Conference in Santa Cruz today.
The CMOS part of the die is fabbed at Seiko-Epson’s fab and the wafers are then transferred to Bosch to have the MEMS structures etched on its 0.35 micron MEMS process.
Since the takeover by Bosch in 2009, Akustika has redesigned its microphone and now has a 4th generation device designated AKU230 with increased sensitivity compared to previous generations.