Synthetic quartz production and applications

The process of hydrothermally growing single crystals of quartz in high pressure autoclaves at elevated temperatures is described in brief. Methods of cutting and processing of wafers of quartz from synthetically grown crystals for fabrication of quartz crystal resonator units are outlined. The principle of operation of quartz crystal units is explained with the aid of an equivalent LCR circuit and the method of controlling precisely the frequency of oscillator circuits by a quartz resonator is elucidated. Extensive applications of quartz in the emerging electronic era are reviewed, both for analogue and digital circuitry, and the Indian demand analysed in the perspective of production capacity of a leading developed country of the world