xMEMS, a Santa Clara, CA startup founded in 2017, announced to release their piezoelectric MEMS speakers named Montara, which are made of pure silicon. This achievement is significant in that the conventionally electromagnetic speakers now can be manufactured in a semiconductor fab with the same lithography process making VLSI (Very-Large-Scale Integration) chips. According to the company, xMEMS monolithic MEMS speakers roll off the fab cleanroom completely ready for use, whereas the other companies’ MEMS speakers still require to manually assemble the movable membrane. The monolithic fabrication process of MEMS speakers not only saves time and cost, but also reduces defect rate. The MEMS speakers by xMEMS are therefore highly uniform and consistent in quality, characteristics, and performance as any other digital circuits.
Montara MEMS speakers can render the frequency range with high fidelity, from 20Hz to 20kHZ covering the entire human audible spectrum. The THD (total harmonic distortion) is just about 0.5% at 300Hz @ 94 dB SPL. The acoustic characteristics of Montara are amazingly good. The frequency response curve is flat at about 115 dB sealed SPL (Sound Pressure Level) @ IEC60318-4 coupler. The power consumption is as low as 42 µW (speaker only) and 11.52 mW (speaker and amplifier). The Montara MEMS speaker has a less than 0.1ms latency across all frequencies and < 50µs group delay (mechanical latency) without 90° phase shift. The Montara speaker has a very small dimension, 8.4mm (W) x 6.05mm (L) x 0.985mm (H), which makes it perfect for wearables, smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other miniature devices. The monolithic MEMS speakers of xMEMS offer high SPL, low THD, very low power consumption, miniature package and uniform fabrication process which outperform the traditional voice-coil based speakers
Highlighted Features:
- Full Bandwidth Speaker for Sealed-Ear Designs (20Hz-20kHz)
- Monolithic MEMS Process eliminate calibration and driver matching
- IP57 Water/dust resistant
- >20kHz resonant frequency = High fidelity @ high frequency
- SMT-ready
- 10,000g shock resistance
Sealed-Ear: full bandwidth speaker replaces single dynamic driver systems.
Unsealed or multi-driver: Tweeter replaces one or more balanced armatures.
Read more at: https://xmems.com/
