Inside a Crystal Oscillator…….!!
A crystal oscillator is an electronic oscillator circuit which uses inverse piezoelectric effect, ie when electric field is applied across certain materials it produces mechanical deformation. Thus it uses mechanical resonance of a vibrating crystal of piezoelectric materiel to create an electric signal with very precise frequency. They have high stability, quality factor, small size and low cost and this makes them superior over other resonators like LC circuit, ceramic resonator, turning forks etc. This image show a 8MHz crystal oscillator commonly used in microcontrollers and microprocessors. Although the...