Unexpected uses of Gorilla Glass

A tour around Corning's glass labs will show the brand new functionality of Gorilla Glass toughened glass. Even someday, our smartphone can test whether the surrounding water is clean enough to drink.

>>>Inside Gorilla Glass tempered glass laboratory

Although there are still no applications for clean water on smartphones, researchers at Corning have discovered that they can use Gorilla Glass - a type of toughened glass manufactured by the company. - to create extremely sensitive biochemical sensors, it is possible to detect traces of toxic gas in the air or pathogens in the water source.

The sensor is just one of many projects being carried out in Corning's R&D labs in New York, USA. In recent decades, Corning's progress in glass production has given us technologies such as optical fiber or flat panel displays. Now, thanks to Gorilla Glass, the company has contributed to creating the latest smartphones. But despite the remarkable success of this toughened glass, Corning is still aiming for the next technological breakthrough.

In 2014, Corning spent about 8% of its revenue on R&D activities (product research and development). It is an investment of up to 800 million USD. The purpose of this is to prepare for the risk that one of its businesses may face difficulties as it has in the past. Between 2000 and 2002, Corning lost more than half of its revenue when the optical fiber business collapsed. Its shares have fallen from 113 USD / share to just over 1 USD / share. And now, the company faces a new challenge when its largest customer, Apple, has come close to replacing Gorilla Glass with sapphire glass.

The phone screen still brings nearly half of Corning's revenue, and nearly a third of it comes from Gorilla Glass. To expand its market share and combat the challenges coming from other materials, Corning is trying to discover more features for this toughened glass, such as turning it into a sensor. Along with that, the company is looking for new markets for Gorilla Glass, in addition to the mobile screen market.

The ability to turn the phone screen into a biochemical sensor is one of the first steps of the project at Corning. Researchers of the company have discovered that they can create very high quality waveguides - which work to navigate light - in Gorilla Glass glass. They can create waveguides located adjacent to the surface to turn glass panels into a type of sensor. This is completely unfeasible for ordinary glasses because they are very fragile. To create waveguides, scientists have to project a high-intensity laser toward the surface of the glass, then trace it on its surface - a job that often changes the optical properties of glass.

Wanting to build a sensor from Gorilla Glass, the researchers had to make a waveguide split into two separate lines. Then make these two paths converge, and light on the two roads intersecting. One line will act as a sensor line, and the other is a reference line. Just a small change of the light pathway - such as its intensity - can also be detected by observing the interference of light from two paths. The researchers simulated this process with a simple sensor that could detect changes in temperature. When heating the sensor line, its shape will be altered, leading to a change in the nature of light passing through this path.

Because waveguides are located near the surface, a portion of the light will escape from the glass, and any object placed on the glass will interact with that part of the light. This means that to create a chemical or biological sensor, scientists can change the surface of the glass to retain a specific goal. For example, we can add antibodies to E.coli bacteria to the glass. Then, to detect the presence of this bacterium, we will just need to drop a drop of water on the phone screen to finish.

Because waveguides are very small in size, they will not interfere with the screen's visibility. And so the sensors for different chemical and biological objects can be integrated into the same smartphone.

Corning's researchers also discovered that Gorilla Glass has a very useful acoustic feature, which is how this type of glass vibrates differently than conventional glass - it can suppress sound waves. The simplest application of this finding is the use of Gorilla Glass to make soundproof glass .

But also with this acoustic feature, scientists can turn Gorilla Glass screen into a set of speakers. Such a prototype was created in Corning's laboratory. It consists of a wire inside the screen, which is attached to a small actuator that vibrates the glass to produce sound. As a result, sound waves can be better controlled, making sound with much better quality.

In another Corning lab, researchers are creating a very special window. It looks normal like many other glass doors, but with just a switch on the circuit board, the glass has turned into a television screen, and viewers can only vaguely see the scenery behind the glass. But when we don't show the videos, we can see through them like other glass doors. Corning is still keeping a secret about how to create this type of monitor.

The most mysterious object among Corning's inventions is a glass Slinky toy. It was created by a very thin Gorilla glass that is bent into a spiral with a new laser tool. Slinky is a toy that when you hold one end and drop the other end, it will expand towards the ground. The glass will often crumble when doing so, but because the Gorilla glass is harder, it will tend to bounce back like a spring. The key to creating this stretchable glass is to make the Gorilla glasses thin.

Corning is also creating Willow Glass , a glass just 100 micrometers thick - a quarter of the thickness of Gorilla glass used as a phone screen. It can be delivered to customers in the form of "glass rolls" , making the glass production process cheaper and easier. Potential customers are still considering the use of this product, but right now, a more flexible, even glass has been put into research by Corning, according to David Morse Technology Manager. . This type of glass can fold around the edges of thin objects like a notebook, and fold like that millions of times without breaking. It may be an important factor in foldable electronic devices in the future.

Founded in 1851, Corning glass maker has been in existence ever since thanks to its ability to continually discover new uses for glass types. As the optical fiber market collapsed, Corning's television cathode ray tube production work was also severely affected. But it overcame the crisis by inventing a high-quality glass manufacturing process for transistors in LCD screens. A few years later, Corning received a call from Steve Jobs, who needed a toughened glass for his first iPhone. And Corning has brought a whole new technology - a toughened glass called Gorilla Glass. Considering what is happening in the above labs, it seems Corning is ready for the next phone call.