Sinue Gomez

69.2: Designing Strong Glass for Mobile Devices

Compared to plastic, glass is tougher, scratch resistant, offers optical quality and a richer look for consumer electronic applications. The mechanical performance of silicate glasses can be improved via ion-exchange in molten salts. Variables that affect the ion-exchange process, such as glass composition, thermal history, time, temperature, and bath chemistry will be discussed.

Corning Incorporated: Designing a New Future with Glass and Optics

Corning Incorporated is a world leader in glass and ceramic products, and has been innovating in these materials since 1851. The company sells component-level technical products that are integrated into systems made by its customers. In most cases, those systems are significantly more efficient or in some instances fundamentally enabled by the performance of the Corning product. Corning calls its products “keystone components” for this reason. Keystone components often result from a combination of both material and process innovations, which tend to be difficult for other companies to duplicate. Developing keystone components requires patient investment in R&D (both materials and process) over long periods of time, and depends upon a culture of innovation and dedication to fundamental understanding. We highlight in this chapter three different keystone components developed by Corning in the past two decades—Corning® Gorilla® Glass for touch-enabled displays, Epic® sensors for drug discovery, and ClearCurve® optical fiber. In each case we provide an overview of Corning’s contributions to each field, describe the areas of technical challenge that still need to be addressed by the research community, and link those to the skills and capabilities that are needed to ensure further success in each.