Electret microphones with stiff diaphragms.

Electret microphones with stiff plates instead of flexible diaphragms are described. The stiff plate and a backplate, separated by a soft cellular polymer spacer ring, yield a capacitance that is varied by the incoming sound wave; thus a voltage change in the plates is induced. Various such plate microphones were built and characterized.

Electret accelerometers: physics and dynamic characterization.

Electret microphones are produced in numbers that significantly exceed those for all other microphone types. This is due to the fact that air-borne electret sensors are of simple and low-cost design but have very good acoustical properties. In contrast, most of the discrete structure-borne sound sensors (or accelerometers) are based on the piezoelectric effect.