Controlled dissolution of quartz material.Part II. Quartz chemical etching applied to blanks industrial manufacturing

In many electronic applications, chemical etching process is used to manufacture the substrates. This method has been applied for long on quartz crystal blanks manufacturing for minor adjustments of the vibration frequencies. This paper presents a way to implement an industrial chemical etching process specially dedicated for large thickness removals without damaging the blanks surface texture. It will be shown how were defined the choice of the etching solvent, and the most sensitive parameters. An industrial equipment will be presented whose principle was deduced from the sensitivity study of these parameters. Finally, the electrical performances of the resonators processed on this equipment will be compared with the performances achieved by conventional means