Gorilla Glass
Designed to be thin, light, and damage-resistant, its surface strength and crack-resistance are achieved through immersion in a hot potassium-salt ion-exchange bath.
[4] Despite its market dominance, Gorilla Glass faces competition from similar products, including AGC Inc.'s Dragontrail, Schott AG's Xensation, and synthetic sapphire.
Replacement of smaller sodium ions with larger potassium ones by a chemical treatment in order to improve the compressive strength of the surface layer of a glass was first developed by Steven Kistler in 1962.
The product was used until the early 1990s in commercial and industrial applications, including automotive, aviation and pharmaceutical uses,[11] notably in approximately 100 Dodge Dart and Plymouth Barracuda racing cars in 1968, where minimizing the vehicle's weight was essential.
The day after he held up the plastic iPhone on stage, Jobs complained about scratches that had developed on the phone's display after carrying it around in his pocket.
[18] Corning further developed the material for a variety of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices for a range of companies.
[25] Gorilla Glass, initially featured on the original iPhone upon its release in June 2007,[14] was formally unveiled in February 2008.
[33] According to Corning, the material is up to three times more scratch-resistant than the previous version, with enhanced ability to resist deep scratches that typically weaken glass.
[36] The design of Gorilla Glass 3 was Corning's first use of atomic-scale modeling before the material was melted in laboratories, with the prediction of the optimal composition obtained through the application of rigidity theory.
[30] Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass, with antibacterial ionic silver incorporated into its surface, was introduced and demonstrated at CES 2014 in January.
[58] However, according to one user report, the glass is susceptible to micro-scratches, and it has been suggested that this could be due to the use of softer materials for improved resistance to shattering.
Additionally, it enhances visual clarity by reducing reflectance by up to 75% compared to a typical glass surface, thereby improving display readability.
It offers enhanced drop protection and scratch resistance, outperforming competitive lithium aluminosilicate glasses.
According to Corning, Gorilla Glass 7i can withstand drops from up to one meter (3.3 ft) onto rough surfaces, an improvement over similar materials that typically fail at half that height, while also being up to two times as scratch-resistant.
In Corning's lab tests, Armor 2 survives drops of up to 2.2 meters (7.2 ft) onto a surface replicating concrete, while maintaining its scratch resistance.
On October 26, 2011, Corning announced the commercial launch of Lotus Glass, designed for OLED and next-generation LC displays.
This enables tighter design rules in advanced backplanes for higher resolution and faster response time.
[77] On February 2, 2012, Corning Incorporated and Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd. signed an agreement to establish a new equity venture for the manufacture of specialty glass substrates for the OLED device market in Korea.
