Corning Gorilla Glass:10 Years Tough

In this post, you'll know about the history, properties and uses of Gorilla Glass, one of the craziest technology which goes into our mobile devices.
Pick up your smartphone. Touch its screen. It’s smooth, crystal-clear, and amazingly resilient. Chances are your smartphone is protected by a sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass. But what exactly is this Gorilla Glass? How is it fabricated and what makes it so strong?

HISTORY

The glass which protects your smartphone from shattering into pieces when fallen from your hand while taking a selfie, from where it originates? Do you know?Corning Glass was born of a science experiment gone wrong.

In 1952, a scientist at Corning placed a piece of photosensitive glass in a furnace for testing. At some point, the furnace skyrocketed from 600 degrees Celsius to 900 degrees. Expecting a ruined sample, the scientist was surprised to find an opaque sheet of material rather than a melted blob of molten mess. As the scientist removed the sample, it dropped to the floor. Rather than shatter as expected, the glass bounced.

The new material was lighter than aluminium, stronger than a common glass of the era, and as hard as steel.

Ion exchange is a chemical strengthening process where large ions are “stuffed” into the glass surface, creating a state of compression. Gorilla Glass is specially designed to maximize this behavior. The glass is placed in a hot bath of molten salt at a temperature of approximately 400°C. Smaller sodium ions leave the glass, and larger potassium ions from the salt bath replace them. These larger ions take up more room and are pressed together when the glass cools, producing a layer of compressive stress on the surface of the glass. Gorilla Glass’s special composition enables the potassium ions to diffuse far into the surface, creating high compressive stress deep into the glass. This layer of compression creates a surface that is more resistant to damage from everyday use.

How It's Made

The glass is made up of sand, plain and simple. Sand, or silicon dioxide, is melted down with limestone and sodium carbonate to create crude glass. For Gorilla Glass, the silicon dioxide is first mixed with other ingredients. Mixing the silicon dioxide with aluminium and oxygen yields aluminosilicate. This gives the glass its sodium ions.

Before the process of ion exchange, the glass must be made to that all-important thinness needed to be useful in cell phones and other mobile devices. The process by which Corning achieves this is called fusion draw. In this process, the molten glass is fed into a V-shaped funnel until it overflows. When it runs over the edge, the molten glass meets at the bottom and is guided away by rollers. The faster the rollers spin, the thinner the glass is.

How It's Tested

So after the compound is mixed, melted, pulled and undergoes ion exchange, the real fun begins. Now is when we learn just how strong this stuff really is. We all know it’s scratch resistant and holds up fairly well to normal use in real-world scenarios, but how fun would that be? It’s time to put Gorilla Glass through its paces.

Gorilla Glass Series

• Vibrant Corning Gorilla Glass
• Large Cover Gorilla Glass
• Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass
• Gorilla Glass NBT
• Gorilla Glass
• Gorilla Glass 3
• Gorilla Glass 4
• Gorilla Glass SR+
• Gorilla Glass 5