silicon oscillator
Silicon oscillators(Si oscillators) offer themselves as a low-cost alternative to quartz oscillators. They have several advantages over classic quartz oscillators, mainly in production technology, as they take up less space and can be integrated directly on the wafer. In addition, they are insensitive to heat, shock and vibration and have much lower power consumption.
In terms of implementation, a distinction is made between two technologies for silicon oscillators: the classic oscillator circuit, consisting of transistors, resistors, inductors and capacitors, with an LC element determining the frequency, and the microsystem technology consisting of MEMS resonators. Both technologies can be integrated directly on the chip.
As for the characteristics of Si oscillators, one of the key features is low power consumption, which may well be less than 1 µA. The stability is relatively high and can assume values between 5 ppm and 20 ppm in the temperature range between -40 and +85 degrees Celsius. The same applies to the phase noise, which is comparable or better than that of crystal oscillators.