LAS VEGAS— With Verizon finally getting the Apple iPhone and a good chunk of the wireless carrier's 93 million customers likely considering switching, now seems like a good time to reflect on one of the core components of this often-coveted device: Gorilla Glass.
Made by upstate New York glass and ceramics manufacturer Corning, Gorilla glass is, according to Gorilla Glass marketing Director Dave Velasquez, found in 20 percent of the world's handsets (roughly 200 million devices). Its key characteristics are its thinness, strength and scratch resistance—a relatively perfect fit for today's plethora of touch-screen handsets.
Gorilla Glass's development coincided somewhat fortuitously with the rise of the touch-screen smartphone, the best known of which is arguably the iPhone. For Corning, however, handsets are only the beginning. The company is experimenting with thinner, more flexible sheets and printing on glass for use on customized laptops and elsewhere. Near term, Gorilla glass can be found on Acer's new ICONIA dual-screen laptop, and Sony announced at CES 2011 that the company will be using it on its latest Bravia line of LCD televisions.
So what makes Gorilla glass so special? Corning gave me the production rundown and then let me try, and witness, a few experiments (though the best one, a 3-pound steel ball dropping on a sheet of gorilla glass from a height of three feet, they would not let me film).
Gorilla glass starts as a combination of pure sand (silicon dioxide) and naturally occurring chemicals (Corning will not specify which, but the resulting glass is called aluminosilicate) which is stripped of impurities and melted down. The molten glass fills up a trough and actually overflows on each side. During this "fusion draw" process, robotic arms gently pull down long .59 millimeter-thick sheets of Aluminosilicate Glass.
At this point, you have some very big sheets of clear, clean, pure glass, but it isn't much stronger than regular glass. Gorilla gets its strength through an interesting chemical process. Corning dips each sheet into a molten salt bath where a chemical exchange occurs. Potassium ions are infused into the glass. At the same time, sodium ions exit the glass. The potassium ions are larger than the sodium ions. This pressure creates what's called "compressive stress". That stress is actually a good thing and stops the glass from breaking on flaws.
To see some of Gorilla Glass's feats of strength, check out the video below.