No, Japanese scientists haven't invented unbreakable glass

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this folio. Terms of utilize.

iPhone 6 sapphire glass front panel, knife scratch test

Yesterday, the Internet was aflutter with news that scientists in Nihon had invented a type of "unbreakable" drinking glass every bit strong as steel. This is not true — but the Japanese researchers still might have their hands on an incredibly useful substance. For years, scientists have known that adding alumina (a white pulverisation) to drinking glass tin create a material that's extremely hard. The resulting product, Aion (sometimes chosen transparent aluminum and marketed as Alon) is capable of serving equally bulletproof glass at a fraction the weight of traditional materials. It's 85% as hard as sapphire and optically transparent.

Optical transparency of the new panel

The problem with traditional Al_twoO_iii drinking glass is that information technology becomes increasingly difficult to manufacture as the per centum of aluminum increases. The loftier melting betoken of aluminum has limited its use in glass manufacturing. The enquiry team in Japan used a technique chosen containerless manufacturing to combine alumina with tantalum, which is typically used in making estimator electronics. The two materials were combined at loftier pressure and heat, then levitated with oxygen gas and melted via laser.

The result? Tiny glass spheres of 54Al₂O₃-46Ta₂O₅. Multiple evaluations demonstrated that the spheres were rubberband (meaning they could deform and return to their original shape), hard (they resist scratching), and thermal shock resistant. The researchers claim that their measured values for this new type of glass put them on par with other oxide glass, though the listed properties for transparent aluminum appear to requite information technology a definite atomic number 82 in multiple categories.

Is this a major breakthrough? At that place's no way to know but withal. Glass is ubiquitous in the modern globe, but the drinking glass covering your smartphone has different backdrop compared with a drinking glass or a mason jar. It's not enough to simply make glass difficult, or stiff, or tough — it needs to embody an unabridged range of characteristics, while retaining the transparency and low reflectivity that make it prized for various applications. This came upward when we thought Apple might adopt sapphire screens for the iPhone — while sapphire is extremely hard (substantially scratch-proof unless yous've got an unusual affluence of diamond in your habitation), it isn't necessarily less prone to breaking than high-end drinking glass.

Hardness, stiffness, strength, toughness — these words identify specific traits of a material. In this instance, the researchers created a glass that's both highly elastic and strong, with expert thermal daze properties. Saying that information technology's unbreakable or stronger than steel, however, isn't accurate. What the data does show is the creation of a new type of glass that's transparent, with adept mechanical properties, and highly refractive. It'due south a stiff overall showing and could pb to improved devices in the future.

Fifty-fifty if the researchers tin can create use this technique to create a new, superior blazon of smartphone glass, it's not articulate if those benefits would actually benefit consumers in the class of better displays. In the past, every improvement to smartphone glass has been immediately used to make the same device thinner, not stronger. Corning's Gorilla Glass 2 was 20% thinner than Gorilla Glass. Gorilla Drinking glass 3 was even thinner (down to 0.4mm compared to 0.55mm for Gorilla Glass). The implication of this is that a screen made to original GG specifications would be fifty-fifty stronger than the original — only few companies accept dared to take this route. Shaving a tenth of a millimeter off a design is even so seen every bit more than important than emphasizing durability. Since both Apple tree and Samsung make coin on hardware sales, phone companies will never take a huge interest in manufacturing products to maximize stress tolerance.