Crystal oscillator

A crystal oscillator is an electronic circuit that uses a piezoelectric crystal to create a stable frequency used by digital electronics as a clock signal for timing. The oscillator's frequency can be used to keep track of time, such as in a quartz watch, or to accurately time the steps in a microprocessor's cycle.

Crystal oscillators work by applying a small voltage that causes the shape of the crystal to deform; when the voltage is removed, the crystal generates a small voltage as it returns to its original shape.The quartz of the crystal oscillates at a stable resonant frequency, acting like a RLC circuit, but with much less loss of energy on each cycle of oscillation. Once a quartz crystal has been adjusted to a particular frequency, usually through carefully cutting the crystal in key spots, it maintains that frequency with high stability.

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v t e Digital electronics
Components	Capacitor Crystal Diode Filter Inductor Integrated circuit Logic gate Optoisolator Oscillator Potentiometer Resistor Resonator Thyristor Transformer Transistor Variable capacitor
Gate arrays	Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) Complex programmable logic device (CPLD) Field programmable gate array (FPGA) Generic Array Logic (GAL) Programmable logic array (PLA) Programmable logic device (PLD)
Design	Asynchronous logic Finite-state machine Hardware description language Logic synthesis Register-transfer level Routing (electronic design) Synchronous logic
Theory	Boolean algebra Combinational logic Computer architecture Digital signal Digital signal processing