Semiconductor device having a micromechanical microphone structure

It is proposed a simple and inexpensive form of realization for a semiconductor device having a micromechanical microphone structure comprising an acoustically active membrane (21) as a deflectable electrode of a microphone capacitor, a fixed acoustically transmissive counter-element (22) as a counter electrode of the microphone capacitor and means for applying a charging voltage between the deflectable electrode (21) and the counter electrode (22) of the microphone capacitor comprises. Thus, the operation of this semiconductor device is not affected by overload situations in which there is contact between the membrane and the counter electrode, the deflectable electrode (21) and the counter electrode (22) of the microphone capacitor are at least doped region-wise opposite, so that they in the contact case form a diode. In addition, the charging voltage between the deflectable electrode (21) and the counter electrode (22) is polarized such that the diode is connected in reverse direction.