You might say we ’re in the former days of the gadget years . A couple of decades ago , personal calculator were n’t portable andcell phoneswere rare luxuries . Today , a quick glance at the electronics depot differentiate you all you necessitate to hump . Gadgets are our playthings and our playthings are portable .
But electronics have meliorate in other ways , too . Processor speeds have risen dramatically , following Moore ’s Law . silver screen resolution is sharp and more vibrant than ever . And some company spend almost as much time on aesthetics as they do applied science . But there ’s one melioration that you ca n’t really see : Glass is getting stronger .
The manufacturing fellowship Corning has developed a product it callsGorillaGlass . The company designed the shabu for our electronic lifestyle . As we carry around figurer , tablet , smartphones , MP3 player and other twist , we risk damage them through quotidian use . Corning’sGorilla Glassstands up to clapperclaw with scratch- and impact - resistant qualities . And Corning ’s approaching allows the glass to be unbelievably flimsy , meaning it wo n’t interfere with electrical condenser jot screens or add together significant system of weights to a twist .
What ’s Corning ’s enigma ? What ’s so special about Gorilla Glass that sets it apart from other kind of shabu ? The answer involves incredible temperature , a particular public treasury , automaton and a molten salt bathing tub . The ruined merchandise is a thin composition of glass that can withstand a lot of punishment .
The Fusion Draw
While you might intend of glass in its manufactured form , the truth is it ’s a material we find in nature . Certain John Rock and minerals becomeglassafter coming into tangency with high temperatures . This occurs naturally along lava flows and places where lightning has hit the ground .
Humans have been creating spyglass for millennia . Furnacescapable of beget unbelievable rut melt the right type of rocks down into what we call aglass melt . At this stage , you may shape the chalk in many way , including using a tube to push air into the mass . We call this techniqueglass blowing .
Commercial glass lean to come in from three master sources . The first is sand , which we refer to chemically as silicon dioxide . That ’s the type of cloth Corning uses in its manufacturing process . The other two types of textile in commercial glass admit limestone and Na carbonate .
Corning takes the atomic number 14 dioxide ( SiO2 ) and combines it with other chemical substance before melting it down into a glass melt . The resulting glass isaluminosilicate– that means the glass contains atomic number 13 , silicon and oxygen . The glass also contains sodium ( Na ) ions , which become of import in the next phase of manufacturing .
Corning pour the molten glass into a V - shaped trough but does n’t stop at fill the trough to the top . The company go on to total molten glass until the methamphetamine hydrochloride begins to overflow the sides of the trough . Automated robotic weapon disembowel the sheets of glass from the sharpness of the trough . Each sheet is just over half a mm duncish .
If you were to use this glass for a covert on your electronic devices , you ’d stop up with a very vindicated covering . But it ’s not damage - resistant like Gorilla Glass – it ’s just aluminosilicate glass . To give Gorilla Glass its ability to withstand scratch and crack , Corning gives these bed sheet of trash a piddling bath .
The Ion Exchange
The literal closed book behind Gorilla Glass involves a chemical process called an ion exchange . Anionis an atom that has either make or lost an negatron and so carries a final bursting charge . Electronsare negatively - charged sub - atomic particle . An ion ’s net complaint is negative if it has an special negatron or convinced if it lost an negatron . Elements in their atomic form have a inert bursting charge because the number of electron matches the number ofprotons , which are positively charged .
So what do ions have to do withglass ? The aluminosilicate glass from the first phase of the fabrication summons contains Na ions . Corning dip these sheet of glass into a bath of K ions . If you look at theperiodic tableof elements , you ’ll see that sodium is just above potassium . Dmitri Mendeleev , the man responsible for creating the periodic table , arrange element by atomic weight and grouped constituent possessing similar qualities together . Both sodium and potassium belong to a group known asactive metals . These are metals that react powerfully with other substance .
Sodium is higher on the periodic table than potassium , which means an atom of sodium is smaller than an atom of potassium . You might think that at the atomic scurf sizing does n’t matter but it turns out that ’s not the case ! If you could take the atomic number 11 ion out of the aluminosilicate glass and supercede them with larger potassium ions , the sheet of glass would experience compressing .
suppose you have a internet . The line in the net is flexible but taut – there ’s not a flock of give . In each pickle of the net there ’s a golf ball defend into blank space . Now envisage that you replace all the golf game balls with baseballs . That ’s similar to what ’s happening on an atomic tier with an ion exchange .
So how does it go ? To replace sodium with potassium , you first must break the ionic bond sodium has with the glass . That ’s why the K salt bath is so spicy – Corning enunciate the bath reaches a temperature of 400 level Celsius ( 752 degrees Fahrenheit ) . At this temperature , the energy ( rut ) go bad down sodium ’s ionic bond to the aluminosilicate . But one of the caliber lower active metals have is that they can maintain an ionic adherence at higher temperatures than the lighter active metal . Potassium weighs more than sodium – that 400 stage Celsius ( 752 degree Fahrenheit ) is n’t enough to keep potassium ions and the aluminosilicate aside .
After a nice spicy magnetic dip in the potassium bath , the aluminosilicate emerges compressed by potassium ion . The densification make a protective level on the shabu and gives it strength that normal field glass does n’t have . And the environmentally conscious can repose easy – Gorilla Glass is recyclable .
Gorillas in the Glass
The ion interchange cognitive operation is n’t new and Corning ’s GorillaGlassisn’t the only chemically strengthened Methedrine on the market . But Corning has demonstrated the forte of its glass in venues like the Consumer Electronics Show where the society invited people to test come up and see how much pressure it would take to go against a man of its glass . Untreated glass would go relatively well . Standard chemically strengthened looking glass would put up more resistivity but would also give way give enough pressure . Gorilla Glass was much more resistant to wrong .
How does Gorilla Glass get into products ? Corning partners with manufacturer and supply Gorilla Glass as part of the Cartesian product ’s manufacturing process . The average consumer ca n’t go out and buy a rag of Gorilla Glass to fit on top of an existing equipment . In that sense , Corning is an original equipment manufacturer ( OEM ) . The finished product will contain Corning ’s trash but the ruined intersection will have another company ’s firebrand on it .
Corning is n’t allowed to reveal all the products that use its Gorilla Glass . But among the products the company has announced are the Sony BRAVIA line of television system sets , the Samsung Galaxy Tab pad of paper equipment and the Dell Streak . Whilesmartphonemanufacturers may look into Gorilla Glass to aid their products refuse the wear and tear that comes with moving a portable gadget around , goggle box manufacturer are considering it to make their products more durable .
Because Corning ’s nuclear fusion draw unconscious process creates thin sheets of chicken feed that do n’t suppress coating like capacitance touch screens , you may see a lot more smartphones and tablet that admit Gorilla Glass in their construction . Corning ’s manufacturing process and the blowup in popularity of portable gadget may be timed just decently to propel the company to success .
For more transparency on touch - screen displays and other related to matter , look on the next varlet .
