DE-based capacitive micro-speakers for generating directional audible sound

Although silicon is the most used material in micro-electro-mechanical-systems, due to the excellent mechanical properties, it has poor performance for generating audible sound by capacitive micro-speakers. This paper studies the capability of dielectric elastomer material instead for generating the directional sound in the human hearing regime. Dielectric elastomers are a branch of smart materials with high desired and practical specifications such as large deformation, energy-efficient, lightweight, biocompatible, and fast response which share the common characteristics of changing their shape under an applied electrical voltage or charge. An elastic circular dielectric elastomer micro-plate with compliant electrodes on both sides suspended over the unmoving plate as a capacitive micro-structure has been modeled as a diaphragm of the micro-speaker. Then the Bessel panel array has been considered in a square matrix form composed of the number of dielectric elastomer micro-speakers. The nonlinear equation of the vibrations of a micro-speaker’s diaphragm under an electrostatic loading and equations of the sound pressure and sound radiation pattern have been presented and solved. The results have shown that utilizing dielectric elastomer-based micro-speakers in a Bessel panel array can generate a directional audible sound pressure in the human hearing range. In addition, the results clear that the desired sound waves in the human audible range and a private or personal listening zone can be produced through adopting an optimal value among the excitation frequencies, diaphragm numbers, radii and inter-element spaces of a Bessel panel array.