The SC Cut Crystal - An Overview

The SC cut is a generic name for a family of bulk wave cuts that are compensated by higher order eleastic effects to minimize problems that exist in more common crystal cuts. The SC cut provides compensation for thermal transient and planar stress effects. This gives improved edge-force sensitivity, improved amplitude-frequency behavior, better short-term stability, better retrace, freedom from activity dips, improved radiation resistance, improved frequency-temperature behavior, and improved phase noise performance. The SC cut also exhibits more complex mode spectra, large, out-of-plane elastic displacements, increased motional resistance, more difficult to manufacture, and is sensitive to electric biasing fields.