Experimental study on the characteristic of the NS-GT cut quartz crystal resonator oscillating in the sub-resonant frequency.

We previously reported that the dynamic photo-elastic method was a very effective measuring technique for the stress distribution of vibrating quartz crystal resonators. The existence of a twisted asymmetrical vibration mode has been verified experimentally when the NS-GT cut quartz crystal resonator was vibrating in the main resonant frequency (MRF). A MRF and a sub-resonant frequency (SRF) of the NS-GT cut quartz resonator were defined as follows. If a mechanical standing wave was in the x' or y' direction of the resonator, the former was MRF vibration and the latter was SRF vibration, respectively. In this paper, stress distributions of two samples of the NS-GT cut quartz crystal resonator, one of which had a thickness of 80 mum and the other 150 mum, were measured by the dynamic photo-elastic method when the resonators were vibrating in each SRF. Thereafter, vibration modes of those resonators were estimated by the experimental data of stress distributions. We find that the vibration mode of the 80-mum resonator had a simple mechanical standing wave on the y' direction and the vibration mode of the 150-mum resonator was combined with a shearing mode in the SRF vibration. From the experiment, we decided that vibration modes of the NS-GT cut quartz crystal resonator were composed of the longitudinal stress T(3)' belonging to the z' direction of the plate and of the shearing stress T(5)' when the plate thickness was thickened and the resonator was oscillating in the SRF.