Electronic – What’s the impact of a crystal’s frequency stability, ESR and load capacitance on micro-controllers

crystalesrmicrocontrolleroscillatorstability

I'm choosing a crystal for MK20DX256VLH7, but I can't seem to find enough information in MK20's datasheet for the oscillator.

So, what I'm interested in knowing is: What is the impact of crystals' frequency stability, ESR, and load capacitance on the performance of the MCU? Would it be acceptable to use 20 ppm, 150 Ohm, and 8 pF values?

The other question on my mind is: By what margin I can deviate from these specs without affecting the performance of the MCU? Can I choose 18 or 15 ppm? Can I reduce the ESR down to 40 Ohms? Can I select load capacitance of 4 pF?

Best Answer

The crystal in combination with the circuit on the microcontroller forms a crystal oscillator. The function of this circuit is to provide a clock for the microcontroller.

You could also use Spehro's Suggestion and use an external crystal oscillator. That combines a crystal and a circuit containing everything that's needed to make that clock signal.

It might be slightly cheaper to use a crystal instead of the crystal oscillator. However, you should follow the recommendations of the microcontroller's datasheet regarding that crystal, there mainly frequency is important. You should also follow the recommendations of the crystal manufacturer's datasheet, there the load capacitance is important.

It is not difficult to get this "right" but get it wrong and it just won't work and that will be a pain.

Also a parameter like the 20ppm accuracy is often irrelevant as crystals are by themselves already very accurate. Also the microcontroller itself doesn't care about accuracy, it would still work even if the clock is extremely inaccurate and varying over temperature and whatnot.