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Crystal Filters
April 1969 Electronics World
As with most technologies that April 1969 Electronics World
Table of Contents
have been around for decades, Wax nostalgic about
the fundamentals of crystal and learn from the
history of early
filters have not changed with electronics. See
time. Materials and methods articles
from Electronics World,
have changed, of course, but the published May 1959 -
December 1971. All copyrights
equivalent lumped element hereby acknowledged.
model (using resistors,
capacitors and inductors) of a crystal filter is
essentially the same today as it was in 1969 when this
article appeared in Electronics Worldmagazine. Open a
first semester electronics circuits textbook and the
chapter on crystals will look much like this piece by Mr.
Robert Kent, of Damon Engineering. The use of crystal
had a profound impact on filter design because their
extremely high "Q" factors permitted very sharp band
edges for rejecting nearby unwanted signals. Relatively
low power handling and high insertion loss prevents
them from being used in receiver front ends requiring
high sensitivity, but they work miracles in IF
(intermediate frequency) and baseband circuits after a
stage or two of signal amplification has occurred.
Crystal Filters
By Robert L. Kent / Engineering
Manager, Electronics Division, Damon
Engineering, Inc.
Like other electronic components,
crystal filters shrank physically when
performance and reliability improved.
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The author They offer users the maximum in

received his stability and selectivity; are favored in
B.S. from military, commercial applications.
Moore School In the
of Electrical beginning,
Engineering, crystal filters
University of could only be
Pennsylvania, used in
in 1950 and equipment Fig. 1. The equivalent
his M.S. in where size and circuit of a 10-MHz
electrical weight were of quartz crystal.
engineering little
from MIT in consequence.
1952. From After World
1952 to War II, weight
1960, he was and volume Fig. 2. The unbalanced
a staff went down half-lattice uses two
member of while crystals and is building
MIT's performance block for more complex
Research and reliability filter configurations.
Laboratory of went up an order of magnitude. Now
Electronics, there is a monolithic crystal filter which
participating again cuts size and costs, has greater
in the reliability, and better temperature
development stability.
of missile Crystal filters are used wherever the
guidance and bandwidth occupied by a desired signal
electronically is no more than a few percent,
scanned preferably no more than a few tenths of
radar one percent, of the operating
systems and frequency. Extremely narrow
in the design bandwidths are attainable because of
of a satellite the inherent high "Q" of the quartz
gravitational resonator. A "Q" of 100,000 is as
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red-shift readily obtainable with a quartz crystal

experiment. at 10 MHz as a "Q" of 100 with an LC
He has been resonant circuit.
with Damon High-frequency crystal filters have
since 1961 made a major impact on h.f. narrow-
where he has band communications. System
been active performance characteristics have been
in the design improved and complexity reduced
of quartz through the use of single-conversion
crystal receiver designs employing crystal
devices. He filters. A more recent application is in
was named the area of frequency synthesis, where
to his present crystal filters are used to clean out
post in 1968 spurious signals caused by mixing and
and is now other non-linear synthesis operations.
engaged in What Users Should Know
the Before discussing "why" and "how" an
development engineer should select and use a crystal
of monolithic filter, it is worthwhile to examine very
piezoelectric briefly some filter designs. As
devices. He is previously stated, crystal filters are
a member of narrow-band devices. They are used to
IEEE, Eta select, or reject, a very narrow
Kappa Nu, frequency band out of a broad
Sigma Tau, spectrum. Quartz crystals provide the
Tau Beta Pi, required selectivity when used in
and is an resonant circuits in conjunction with
associate of capacitors and inductors.
Sigma Xi. He
The most common equivalent electrical
holds
circuit of a quartz crystal is shown in
apatent in
Fig. 1. Shunt capacitance, C0, limits the
the area of
phased bandwidth. Similarly, the series
arrays resistance, R, along with temperature
stability, places a lower limit on
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employed for practical bandwidths.

missile To obtain a symmetrical attenuation
guidance. characteristic in a crystal filter, the
shunt capacitance of the crystals is often "balanced
out" by means of bridge networks. The unbalanced
half-lattice (Fig. 2) is commonly employed for this
purpose, and becomes the building block with which
more complex crystal filters are assembled.
A six-crystal filter is shown
in Fig. 3. Note that a single
"hybrid" transformer can
serve two of the filter Fig. 3 - A single hybrid
sections. transformer can be used
The number of crystals to serve two filter
which the filter uses is sections in this circuit.
usually determined by 'the "shape factor," i.e., the
required selectivity. The shape factor is a ratio of
bandwidths measured at two different attenuation
levels, such as -60 dB and -3 dB. The shape factors for
Butterworth (maximally flat) filter designs are listed in
Table 1. Other designs optimize such characteristics as
group delay uniformity or phase linearity for a specified
shape factor or the number of resonators.
The range of 3-dB bandwidths obtainable with high-
frequency (1-36 MHz) fundamental-mode crystal filters
is typically 0.005 percent to 2.0 percent of center
frequency. Best performance and lowest cost are
obtained by favoring fractional bandwidths between
0.01 percent and 0.5 percent.
Monolithic Crystal Filters
Conventional crystal filters are composed of discrete
crystal resonators, inductors, and capacitors with their
electrical interconnections. In a monolithic crystal filter,
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the electrical coupling

components and connections
are replaced by an elastic
coupling medium, namely the
quartz plate itself. A
monolithic filter consists of a Table 1. Shape factors
single wafer of crystalline for Butterworth
quartz into which are (maximally flat) filters.
deposited two or more pairs
of electrodes, as shown in Fig.
4. Each region between a top
and bottom electrode
becomes a resonator, with the Table 2. Typical
area of vibrational activity terminations for
extending outward for a small monolithic crystal
distance beyond the electrode filters.
region. The degree of elastic
coupling between adjacent
resonators is a function of the
distance between electrode
pairs.
The monolithic filter works Table 3. Case sizes for
this way: A vibration is set up monolithic crystal
(piezoelectrically) across the filters.
crystal's input resonator by
the application of a high-frequency electric field. This
vibration is coupled elastically to successive resonators
until it finally reaches the output resonator. There, the
mechanical vibration is transformed by the
piezoelectric effect back into electrical energy.
The electrical characteristics of monolithic crystal filters
are comparable to those of their conventional
ancestors. The size and complexity are much reduced,
however, resulting in a device that is more reliable and
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costs less. At 21.4 MHz, for example, a four-resonator

monolithic filter housed in a low-profile TO-5 transistor
case occupies only 1/60th of a cubic inch and can be
bought in large quantities for less than $10 each. By
employing these devices with other integrated circuitry,
a complete high-gain narrow-band monolithic i.f.
amplifier can be packaged in a volume of 1/33 cubic
inch.
Considerations Affecting Cost
The cost of a crystal filter can range from less than ten
dollars to several hundred dollars. The major factors
determining price are:
a. Quantity required - the multiplicity of parameters
makes standardization of models impossible, with few
exceptions. The engineering cost associated with a new
design is normally amortized over the number of units
purchased.
b. Complexity (number of crystal resonators) -
determines assembly and alignment time as well as
materials cost.
c. Degree of difficulty and special testing requirements
- by avoiding the extremes shown on design charts,
and by limiting the specification requirements to what
is really needed, this cost element can be minimized.
Fig. 4. Monolithic filter consists of a single quartz wafer
on which two or more pairs of electrodes are
deposited.
Choosing the Filter
A rather common error in the design of electronic
systems that employ sophisticated components is to
leap first and look later. If the salient characteristics
and limitations of the major components can be borne
in mind from the earliest phases of the design, a better
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and more economical

system will result.
Therefore, a designer who
is planning to employ
crystal filters in his system
should consider the
following areas:
a. Fractional Bandwidths:
For best performance and
lowest cost, choose A conventional 4-pole
intermediate frequencies so crystal filter used in Talos
that the required missile system, with a
bandwidths fall between center frequency of 2.5
0.01 percent and 0.5 MHz, 1.5-kHz bandwidth.
percent of center frequency.
At frequencies from 35 MHz
to 70 MHz it is necessary to
employ third-overtone
resonators, and the An assortment of
bandwidth limits become monolithic crystal filters
0.005 percent and 0.05 covering the frequency
percent of center frequency. range of 3-30 MHz and
Overtone crystal filters are bandwidths of 500-
more costly than 15,000 Hz.
fundamental-mode filters; moreover, it is usually
possible to obtain the same bandwidth at a lower
center frequency with fundamental crystals.
b. Stability with Time and Temperature:
Quartz crystals are extremely stable devices. Typical
aging rates of high-frequency filter crystals are 5-10
parts per million per year. The variation of frequency
with temperature is typically (maximum) ±10 parts per
million from 0°C to 50°C, or ±20 parts per million from
-40°C to 100°C. For bandwidths greater than 0.1
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percent of center frequency, the effects of other

discrete components upon the aging and temperature
characteristics can be greater than effects of the
crystals themselves. The system configuration and
filter bandwidths should be chosen to minimize the
effects of time and temperature upon system
performance.
c. Filter Terminations:
Conventional (non-monolithic) crystal filters normally
contain tuned transformers and inductors, making it a
simple matter for the filter designer to shift from the
characteristic terminating impedance of the filter to
whatever value the user chooses to provide. There are,
however, several points worthy of consideration in this
regard:
1. If a pure resistive termination is specified, the shunt
capacitive reactance should be at least ten times
greater than the terminating resistance. 2. A tolerance
of ±5 percent on the terminating impedance is
normally required in order to obtain best performance.
If this is inconvenient for the user to provide, resistive
padding can be incorporated into the filter. The result is
an increase in insertion loss. 3. A reactive terminating
impedance, such as 20 picofarads in parallel with 50
ohms, can usually be accommodated in the design. At
30 MHz, for example, a capacitance in parallel with 50
ohms might be specified as 20 ±10 pF, since 10 pF has
a reactance of about 500 ohms. 4. At frequencies
above 10 MHz it is generally desirable to specify a low
terminating resistance such as 50 ohms. This
minimizes the detuning effects of parasitic capacitance.
5. Monolithic crystal filters usually do not contain tuned
inductors or transformers. In order for the user to
exploit fully the size and cost advantages of the
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monolithic filter, he must design external circuitry to

present the terminating impedance required by the
filter. Typical values of terminating resistance for
monolithic filters are given in Table 2. The impedances
shown are for filters operating in the h.f. band.
d. Other Specifications:
1. Shape factor, more than
any other characteristic,
determines the number of Fig. 3 - A single hybrid
resonators required. A transformer can be used
Butterworth (maximally to serve two filter
flat) design provides 6 dB sections in this circuit.
attenuation at twice the 3-dB bandwidth for each
independent resonator, or pole. A six-pole Butterworth
filter, for example, would yield a shape factor from 36
to 3 dB of 2:1. A Chebyshev (equi-ripple passband)
design will be steeper in cut-off, while a Bessel
(maximally flat time delay) design will provide a
considerably more gradual attenuation characteristic.
2. Rejection of spurious responses. Inharmonic
overtone responses of filter crystals can produce
undesired" spurs" at frequencies removed from the
passband. Spurious responses generally appear in
wider bandwidth filters, especially those comprising
only one or two cascaded sections. Inharmonic
overtones of high-frequency crystals typically occur at
frequencies 1-3 percent above the fundamental
resonance. This fact can sometimes be advantageous
in the selection of a local oscillator frequency. 3.
Ultimate attenuation (approximate rule of thumb):
narrow crystal filters - 30 dB per section; wider crystal
filters - 20 dB per section; monolithic filters - 20 dB
per resonator below 10 MHz, 15 dB per resonator
above 10 MHz. 4. Insertion loss: 1 dB to 6 dB,
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increasing as either the upper or the lower bandwidth

limit is approached. 5. Ripple in passband: typically
±0.5 dB over wide temperature ranges; 0 dB for
rounded-nose (Gaussian or Bessel) types. 6. Volume:
conventional crystal filters - 1-24 cubic inches. Size
increases with number of resonators and with
decreasing frequency. Monolithic filters - see Table 3.
Looking Ahead
Within the next five years,
manufacturing techniques will
be developed for large-scale
production of sophisticated Fig. 4 - Monolithic filter
monolithic quartz filters. consists of a single
Commercial usage of quartz wafer on which
monolithic filters in home two or more pairs of
entertainment and ham radio electrodes are
will become economically deposited.
feasible, resulting in a large market for the devices.
Because of its small size, the monolithic filter will be
treated more like a miniature integrated-circuit module
than a complex subassembly. Unit prices as low as
$3-$4 are not inconceivable.
Another area of increasing interest is the use of new
piezoelectric synthetic crystal materials in filters. Zinc-
oxide and other metals are currently being explored as
possible resonator materials. The attraction of these
materials stems from the fact that greater piezoelectric
coupling coefficients exist than with quartz.
Sophisticated filters with fractional bandwidths of 1-10
percent could then be achieved in the high-frequency
range, closing the gap that currently exists between
quartz crystal devices and LC filters.

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Posted January 18, 2018

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