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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/mems-microphone-advanced-materials-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Sensors & MEMS · Patent LandscapeMEMS Microphone Advanced Materials Patents
- Filing has gone flat, not forward. Activity peaked in 2019 at five records and the 2022 midpoint sits at just two — a niche that grew fast once and has not repeated it.
- One diaphragm-pressure family dominates citations. The low-pressure-region diaphragm design behind US20150001647A1 and its continuations draws far more citations than anything else in the set, a strong signal of where prior art is densest.
- No single assignee is currently active. Every tracked assignee — from Infineon to Knowles to Royal Philips — shows zero filings in the latest year, consistent with a technology area between filing waves rather than one being actively contested.
30
Published Records
67%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-67%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (3 records) with 2024 (1) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 30 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this patent set covers
This landscape tracks patent families at the intersection of MEMS/silicon microphone architectures and advanced diaphragm or piezoelectric materials — AlN and PZT films, diaphragm material claims, and graphene diaphragm concepts — filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 cut-off. The search combines transducer-level classification (H04R) with MEMS structure and manufacturing codes (B81B, B81C), so it captures material and diaphragm claims rather than general acoustic-transducer filings.
Thirty published records make up the full ranking set, a small enough corpus that individual families — not statistical trends — carry most of the signal. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent year is understated by construction and should be read as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing activity, 2017–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 30-family dataset: when filings happened, and which classification codes they carry.
A single peak, then decline
Filings were at zero in 2017, rose to a peak of five in 2019, and had fallen back to two by the 2022 midpoint — a shape consistent with one wave of interest that has not been repeated, rather than sustained build-out.
Concentrated in transducer and MEMS-structure codes
Almost every record carries the H04R transducer code, and roughly half also carry B81B or B81C MEMS-structure and manufacturing codes — confirming this is a diaphragm/material-construction set, not a general acoustics one. A single record touching G01L pressure measurement is the only outlier.
Shares are the percentage of the 30 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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The most-cited prior art
Representative filing
EP3094112B1 — Silicon MEMS Microphone and Manufacturing Method
SINOVISION TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.
Filed by Sinovision Technologies, this family describes a silicon MEMS microphone structure and its manufacturing process, sitting within the same diaphragm/MEMS-structure classification cluster as the most-cited US filings in this set.Granted 2019-04-10.
Highest-citation records in this set
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150001647A1 | MEMS Microphone with Low Pressure Region Between Diaphragm and Counter Electrode | 147 |
| 2 | US9181080B2 | MEMS microphone with low pressure region between diaphragm and counter electrode | 51 |
| 3 | US20160066099A1 | MEMS Microphone with Low Pressure Region between Diaphragm and Counter Electrode | 49 |
| 4 | US20160304337A1 | MEMS silicone microphone and manufacturing method thereof | 33 |
| 5 | US9986344B2 | MEMS microphone with low pressure region between diaphragm and counter electrode | 24 |
| 6 | WO2007010421A2 | MEMS microphone and package | 13 |
| 7 | US9676615B2 | MEMS silicone microphone and manufacturing method thereof | 10 |
| 8 | US20180262844A1 | MEMS sound transducer, MEMS microphone and method for providing a MEMS sound transducer | 8 |
| 9 | US20200213775A1 | Method for Manufacturing MEMS Microphone | 7 |
| 10 | WO2009154981A2 | MEMS microphone array on a chip | 3 |
Citation counts reflect a searched corpus that favours older filings — treat rank as a measure of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three readings of the dataset that matter more than the raw counts.
Filing momentum
2019 peak: 5
records in the peak year
One wave, not a trend
Filings rose to five records in 2019 and had halved by the 2022 midpoint. A 30-family dataset this small, with no assignee active in the latest year, reads as a technology that had one concentrated filing push rather than an ongoing build-out.
Peak year 2019, midpoint 2022 = 2
Prior-art density
147 citations
top-cited record
The diaphragm-pressure design is the anchor
The low-pressure-region diaphragm/counter-electrode design, published first as US20150001647A1, anchors this field's citation graph with continuations and divisionals repeating the same core structure. New diaphragm-geometry claims will be read against this family first.
Top five cited records share one design lineage
Classification spread
29 of 30 in H04R
records carrying the transducer code
Material claims still sit inside transducer classification
Only 14 of 30 records also carry the B81B MEMS-structure code and 11 carry B81C manufacturing — meaning most material-innovation claims are still filed as transducer improvements rather than as standalone materials-science filings.
H04R 29 · B81B 14 · B81C 11 · G01L 1
Jurisdiction mix
US 15 of 30
receiving-office share
US-first filing, thin elsewhere
Half of all records were filed or published through the US receiving office, with Europe, WIPO/PCT and China each in single digits and India appearing only once. Anyone filing in China or India in this space faces a comparatively thin local prior-art baseline.
US 15 · EPO 5 · WIPO 5 · China 4 · India 1
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to mems microphone advanced materials, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Who's active
Assignees and collaboration patterns
No assignee in this set filed in the latest tracked year, and the ranking is spread thinly across corporate and academic filers rather than concentrated in one lab.
Corporate filers
0 in latest year
for every tracked assignee
A dormant field, not an abandoned one
Infineon, Knowles, AAC Acoustic Technologies, Royal Philips and others all show zero filings in the most recent tracked year. Given the 18-month publication lag, this is consistent with either a genuine pause or filings still working through examination.
Six leading assignees, all flat
Academic collaboration
4 co-assignee pairs
across the dataset
Tufts University appears twice as a hub
Tufts University pairs with two separate named inventors across the co-assignment data, the strongest recurring academic link in the set. Royal Philips' pairing with a named inventor is the other repeated collaboration.
Strongest pairs each recur twice
Concentration
30 families total
in the full ranking
A long tail, no dominant single owner
With only 30 families spread across corporate labs in Germany, China and the Netherlands plus one US university, no single assignee holds a commanding share of this niche — it remains genuinely contestable.
No assignee currently filing
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Infineon Technologies AG | 0 | — |
| Wuxi Ganxun Microelectronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| AAC Acoustic Technologies (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Yaoxinwei (Shanghai) Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Royal Philips) | 0 | — |
| Knowles Electronics, LLC | 0 | — |
| Tufts University | 0 | — |
| WHITE ROBERT D | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps rather than a general monitoring exercise.
Map the diaphragm-pressure lineage in full
Trace every continuation and divisional off the top-cited low-pressure-region diaphragm family to see exactly which claim elements are still open for a new geometry.
Explore in EurekaCheck graphene diaphragm freedom-to-operate
Graphene diaphragm concepts appear in the search terms but are thin in the granted set — worth a targeted novelty check before committing to a claim strategy.
Run a search in EurekaWatch for renewed filing activity
With every tracked assignee at zero in the latest year, a fresh filing from any of the corporate leaders would signal the next wave starting — set an alert rather than a one-off search.
Set up monitoring in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about this landscape
This dataset contains 30 published patent families filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, searched against MEMS/silicon microphone terms combined with diaphragm-material and piezoelectric-material claim language. That is a small, tightly scoped niche compared with general MEMS microphone patenting overall. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true count for the most recent year or two will rise as later applications publish.
The tracked assignees include corporate filers such as Infineon Technologies, Knowles Electronics, AAC Acoustic Technologies, and Royal Philips, alongside academic filers like Tufts University. None of these assignees shows any filing activity in the latest tracked year, so the field currently has no single dominant, actively-filing leader — ownership is spread across a long tail rather than concentrated at the top.
The filing trend in this dataset peaked at five records in 2019 and had fallen to two by the 2022 midpoint, with the most recent tracked year showing no activity from any leading assignee. This pattern is consistent with one concentrated filing wave around diaphragm-pressure and material designs that has not been repeated, though the 18-month publication lag means very recent filings may not yet be visible in the data. It does not necessarily mean underlying R&D has stopped — only that granted or published claims have not kept pace.
US20150001647A1 and its related continuations describe a MEMS microphone diaphragm with a low-pressure region between the diaphragm and counter electrode, and this lineage is the most-cited prior art in the dataset by a wide margin. Any new diaphragm geometry that relies on a pressure differential between the diaphragm and its counter electrode will likely need to be checked against this family's claim scope. Designing around it typically means changing the mechanism used to control diaphragm-electrode pressure rather than just the diaphragm material itself.
Graphene diaphragm layer stacks, fine-tuned AlN/PZT thin-film deposition, low-pressure cavity sealing methods, and piezoelectric aging compensation all appear in the search scope but carry noticeably fewer claims than the diaphragm-pressure lineage that dominates citations. These sub-areas sit adjacent to well-claimed territory without being occupied by it, which makes them worth a targeted freedom-to-operate check before investing in a claim strategy there. Given the small size of this dataset overall, even a handful of new filings in any of these branches would materially change the picture.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on MEMS Microphone Advanced Materials covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.