Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Gorilla glass isn't gorilla enough :@(

It wasn't a crash test but my high regards for toughened glass was shattered.

The phone was resting on ground, screen facing upside. It was put (accident :D) with a chair on top .. 3 fine lines on the screen. Something very minute, but definitely a scratch. A 1100 would have slipped away and taken it.

Well, the Corning Gorilla glass has let me down. My curiosity let me learn more about it ...

Corning Incorporated, is a glass and ceramics manufacturers who developed an alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass engineered specifically to be thin, light and damage-resistant. They named it the great Corning Gorilla glass ...  meow!

The glass is toughened by ion exchange. It is placed in a hot bath of molten potassium salt at a temperature of approximately 400 °C (~750 °F).

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.

Like all glass, Gorilla glass can be recycled :|

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