Gorilla Glass Manufacturing Process
In the world of mobile devices, Gorilla Glass is a scratch-resistant and long-lasting glass product manufactured by Corning that is used to protect the displays of tablets, smartphones, and other portable electronic devices. Touch screen technologies may be used with the glass since it is lightweight, robust, and compatible with them. Because of its robustness, Gorilla Glass may be used to create displays that are very thin.
Touch screen technology in last few years has grown drastically in various applications, in order to overcome the difficulties faced by the touch screen; a new frontier technology has to take its part to revitalize the use of touch screens. In this counterpart, Gorilla Glass has thrown a flashlight focus on touch screen technology. Gorilla Glass has taken an apt play in touchscreen technology. This scratch-repellent glass is used to form touchscreen panels for portable gadgets like ATM machines, android mobile phones, tablets, personal computers, and MP3 Players. It’s designed to protect display screens from scratches, sticky oils, fractures, etc,.
Process 1: Melting the glass
Process 2: Mold the Glasses
Process 3: Ion Exchange
The Gorilla Glass Manufacturing Process:
Gorilla glass starts as a mix of pure sand (silicon dioxide) and naturally occurring chemicals (resulting glass is termed alumino-silicate), which splits the impurities and melts the sand. The molten glass fills up the bin and it overflows onto each facet. During this “fusion draw” method, the resulting molten glass is pulled down by a robust process to a length of 0.59 millimeter-thick sheets of aluminum silicate glass.
At this point, you have some very huge sheets of clear, clean, pure glass. However, it’s not much stronger than regular glass. Gorilla gets its strength through a noteworthy action. Currently, the glass sheets are dipped each into a molten salt bath where a chemical exchange happens. Potassium ions are infused into the glass. At a similar time, sodium ions exit from the glass compound. Here, the potassium (K) ions are larger than the sodium (Na) ions. So compressive stress occurs. That stress is really an honest factor and stops the glass from breaking on flaws.
Gorilla glass Chemical Strengthening Process:
Chemical tempering strengthens the glass by putting the surface of the glass into compression by “stuffing” larger-sized ions into the glass surface. During the chemical tempering method, the glass is submerged in a bath of molten salt at prescribed temperatures. The heat causes the smaller ions to depart the surface of the glass and bigger ions present within the molten salts to enter it. Once the glass is off from the bath and cooled, they shrink. The larger ions that are currently present within the surface of the lens are crowded along. This creates a compressed surface, which results in stronger glass that’s more resistant to breakage.
Achieving the specified compressive stress characteristics is time and temperature dependent. Gorilla glass, in contrast to most soda lime glasses, is not self-limiting through layer, thus smart time/temperature management is important for a stable method. Gorilla glass could also be chemically tempered at temperatures up to 460 °C (temperatures vary between 390 °C and 420 °C) with the target salt temperature maintained at +/-2 °C. Tempering time should be controlled at intervals of +/-5 min.
Gorilla glass Fluorosilane coating:
As people’s lives become busier and workplaces transcend the boundaries of office walls, the demand for mobile technologies continues to grow. With this transformation comes the need for a cover glass that promotes clarity while also protecting and promoting the lifespan of display devices. The primary objective for the development of this coating has been to enable the continued ability of a coated glass surface to exhibit superior optical clarity and mechanical reliability, service life, and, most importantly, the glass surface must function for its purpose.
Applying Fluorosilane coating over the glass sheets prevents fingerprint appearance and enables ease of fingerprint removal from everyday products like dirt, oil, soap, lotion, butter, ketchup, etc. Now the coating improves the clarity and optical performance better than soda lime glass.
The latest generation of Gorilla Glass is claimed to be 20% thinner, and more responsive to touchscreen commands than its predecessor. This implies that the screen pictures are probably brighter and slimmer line in style.
Gorilla Glass’s development coincided somewhat fortunately with the increase of the touch-screen smartphone; the best example is arguably the iPhone. However, handsets are only the beginning. The product/merchandise is experimenting with more thin and flexible sheets, and printing on the glass to be used on custom-built laptops, Liquid Crystal Display Televisions et al.
