page_title: Crystal oscillator
section_title: Quartz
hierarchical_section_title: Crystal oscillator / Crystal structures and materials / Quartz
caption_attribution_description: English: A display of common packages for a variety of quartz crystal products.
context_page_description: A crystal oscillator is an electronic oscillator circuit that uses the mechanical resonance of a vibrating crystal of piezoelectric material to create an electrical signal with a precise frequency. This frequency is often used to keep track of time, as in quartz wristwatches, to provide a stable clock signal for digital integrated circuits, and to stabilize frequencies for radio transmitters and receivers. The most common type of piezoelectric resonator used is the quartz crystal, so oscillator circuits incorporating them became known as crystal oscillators, but other piezoelectric materials including polycrystalline ceramics are used in similar circuits.
  A crystal oscillator, particularly one using a quartz crystal, works by distorting the crystal with an electric field, when voltage is applied to an electrode near or on the crystal; a property known as electrostriction or inverse piezoelectricity. When the electric field is removed, the quartz—which oscillates at a precise frequency—generates an electric field as it returns to its previous shape, and this can generate a voltage. The result is that a quartz crystal behaves like an RLC circuit, but with a much higher Q.
context_section_description: The most common material for oscillator crystals is quartz. At the beginning of the technology, natural quartz crystals were used but now synthetic crystalline quartz grown by hydrothermal synthesis is predominant due to higher purity, lower cost and more convenient handling. One of the few remaining uses of natural crystals is for pressure transducers in deep wells. During World War II and for some time afterwards, natural quartz was considered a strategic material by the USA. Large crystals were imported from Brazil. Raw "lascas", the source material quartz for hydrothermal synthesis, are imported to USA or mined locally by Coleman Quartz. The average value of as-grown synthetic quartz in 1994 was 60 USD/kg.
caption: Common package types for quartz crystal products
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