BVA resonators and oscillators: a review. Relation with space requirements and quartz material characterization

BVA technologies for piezoelectric resonators were introduced in the late 70s (1976, 1977, 1978). Since then, a lot of work dealing with BVA resonators has been done in our laboratory and also in several other laboratories including industry laboratories. BVA oscillators have been designed to match BVA resonators´ special properties. BVA resonators and oscillators are now commercially available from at least 3 companies. Due to their special structure, BVA resonators (monolithic and often “electrodeless”) happen to be an efficient tool to obtain an interesting link between the properties of resonators and oscillators and the properties of piezoelectric material (usually quartz). Under those conditions, a review devoted to BVA resonators and oscillators may be useful because there is a need of summarizing existing results and because some results have never been published yet. This is the case for some recent results dealing with space applications of BVA resonators and oscillators. This is also the case for connection of resonators and oscillators parameters with material´s properties. In this paper various types of BVA resonators are presented (including tactical type) and BVA technologies are discussed with use of AT, SC and eventually BT cuts. Results obtained by various authors are presented