Epson's unique etching process for small volume SMT crystal oscillators

Mar 14,2024
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Epson EPSON is the world's largest printer manufacturer and also a manufacturer of quartz body components, with a complete range of products and top-notch production processes. Both in terms of production technology and cutting and etching technology, it is relatively advanced. Its kilohertz AT cutting product is admirable by people in the electronics industry. In the 2010 global crystal oscillator enterprise ranking, Epson ranked first, With a 32.768K crystal oscillator product, Epson Group dominates the entire electronic components industry and has gained the support and trust of many electronic merchants worldwide, earning a good reputation. Therefore, Epson Group has made indelible contributions to the development and promotion of the crystal oscillator industry, and is a model for many crystal oscillator manufacturers to learn from.

X1A000061001400 Epson's unique etching process for small volume SMT products, quartz body

Epson's superb technology is not only reflected in the manufacturing process, but also in the etching process. The most important thing about a crystal oscillator is the starting crystal inside, and the quality of this crystal oscillator depends on the cutting and polishing of the crystal chips. Each quartz crystal chip is cut from a large piece of crystal, some of which are natural and artificially cultivated, and now most of them use artificially cultivated crystal chips, When using mechanical processing methods, the quartz body is first cut into pieces and each piece is chamfered and polished to make it smoother, which can better play to the performance of the quartz crystal chip. However, there is also a disadvantage that the shape of each quartz chip will be different, and the etching process uses photolithography to finely process on a wafer basis, so the uneven shape can be controlled to a smaller extent, It can avoid the uneven characteristics of quartz crystal components caused by uneven shapes. After being packaged with silver plated electrodes, it becomes a stable performance SMT crystal oscillator.

This etching process has helped Epson EPSON solve many problems, especially with the continuous development of small volume SMT oscillators. Small volume oscillators such as 2520, 2016, and 201216121610mm use this method to solve the problem of difficult polishing due to their small volume. The chips inside the outer shell packaging need to be polished very small in order to be packaged. If mechanical processing is used to polish the chips, it is difficult to polish them, By using photolithography technology, the shape of quartz crystal chips can be kept uniform. Compared with mechanical processing (left), even ultra small quartz products can achieve superior temperature characteristics with less unevenness. Therefore, in terms of stability and temperature resistance, the stability of crystal quality is much higher than that of mechanical processing,