As the most well-known product of Corning Incorporated, "Gorilla" glass has done at least two good things: the first is to meet the operational needs of touch-screen phones, and the second is how to deal with the bad habits of some people who crash phones. Although a cell phone with Gorilla Glass installed can still be smashed, it is already much stronger than ordinary glass.

Recently, Corning intends to further develop this fine tradition of gorilla glass. In the company's factory, the production plan for the third generation of gorilla glass is being put on the agenda, it will be several times stronger than the current product. The new product was publicly presented at the CES show in January 2013, and Corning plans to offer it in 2013.

When Corning is stepping up its deployment of new products, its potential competitors in the future have quietly sneaked on phones like the iPhone 5. For added protection, the iPhone 5 uses synthetic sapphires on the camera lens cover. Although this material has not yet become a protagonist, you should not doubt its prospects.

"More and more manufacturers will follow Apple and use more sapphire materials in their smartphones." Eric Virey, an analyst at consulting firm Yole Developpement, expressed this view. Even in the mobile phone industry supply chain, there are news that a large number of sapphire glass will appear on the home keys and display screens of Apple's next-generation iPhone.

Since the birth of the iPhone in 2007, the gorilla glass, one of the world's best-selling mobile phones, has gradually dominated the touch screen of most smartphones. Wang Zhao, Director of Consumer E-Commerce of Corning International Greater China, said that the number disclosed by China Business Weekly is that in the past six years, Gorilla Glass has been applied to more than 30 major brands and more than 1,000 product models worldwide, covering more than 1.5 billion devices.

Gorilla Glass was originally developed to meet the characteristics of touch screens. Corning not only changed the composition of ordinary glass for this purpose, but also added aluminum in addition to the traditional silicate, and also used a patented technology called “melt down process”. In the end, the glass is not only smooth and light, but also has high sensitivity, but also has a certain strength to resist scratches and collisions. These product features are also the origin of the name "gorilla".

The famous New York Times, "Why the iPhone is made in China," once described the birth of gorilla glass. In 2007, one month before the iPhone’s original shelf-up time, Jobs called a small group of Apple executives into an office. He angrily lifted a prototype that was lying in his trouser pocket for several weeks, so that everyone could see dozens of tiny scratches on the plastic screen and then smashed his key out of his trouser pocket. “People will put their phones in their pockets and put the keys in. I don’t want to sell scratched products,” he said. The only way is to find a glass that won't scratch, and this must be done within 6 weeks.

However, the facts from the later maintenance figures are still somewhat cruel: a recent release from the electronics warranty company SquareTrade shows that Americans have spent $5.9 billion to repair their iPhones since the first iPhone was launched in 2007. Among the top 5 reasons for iPhone damage, “fall” accounted for 30%, which was 12% higher than the “influent” in the second place; 6% of users used tape to glue the broken iPhone screen. To continue to use.

“Many mobile phone manufacturers and users have experienced screen ruptures. One of our surveys shows that 12% of smartphones will burst in the first year of use, and users are even willing to pay $30 more for a stronger screen. "Virey said.

Although gorilla glass is much stronger than ordinary glass, even a knife can't scratch it, but it is still not invincible, especially when it comes to sand containing quartz, because its hardness even exceeds steel. In addition, the strength of the gorilla glass does not mean that its toughness is high, and it is still easily broken when it falls.

So when industrial sapphire suppliers think there should be a more perfect solution, this defect of gorilla glass becomes their "handle."

The main component of sapphire is alumina, which is a colorful color because it contains other impurities such as iron. The pure sapphire is colorless and transparent, and its light transmittance is excellent, so it is very suitable for display production. The sapphire has a higher dielectric constant than tempered glass. If used on a touch screen, the sensitivity is higher in the same area. The more critical indicator is hardness. The strength of sapphire is three times that of tempered glass on the market today. The index in the hardness table can reach 9, second only to diamonds.

“This makes it almost impossible for Sapphire to be scratched,” said Jeff Nestel-Patt, Marketing Director of GT Advanced Technologies (“GTAT”), to CBN Weekly. Originally engaged in the solar industry, the company acquired an industrial sapphire supplier, the Crystal System, in July 2010, owing to the potential of sapphire in the future of mass consumer electronics such as smartphones.

Sapphire has gradually entered the consumer market after several technological changes. Natural sapphires are very rare and expensive. Until 1902, the French chemist Auguste Verneuil first invented the synthetic sapphire technology, which has since been applied to high-end watches and some products with high strength requirements.

In the 1960s, due to the sturdy and stable sapphire and strong anti-signal interference capability, sapphire sheets were used as substrates and covered with a layer of silicon for high-frequency anti-jamming electronic components. This technology is still used today. Used to reduce signal interference in the antenna of a smartphone. In addition, almost every electronic product with LED display today uses sapphire as the substrate for LED chips, which is the largest application market for sapphire.

In terms of mobile phone screens, sapphire was once only a choice of expensive niche brands, such as Vertu. Raja M. Parvez, CEO of Rubicon Technologies, another industrial sapphire company, explained that after the synthetic sapphire was synthesized in the mold, it was initially an irregular cylinder. Because of its high strength, if it is polished and cut into thin slices, and then made into different shapes as needed, it needs to be cut with diamond diamonds and then polished. The cost of this production process is very high.

Here are some numbers to prove: making a smartphone display with Gorilla Glass costs only $3; and the same area of ​​sapphire glass costs more than seven times that of Gorilla Glass, which costs $23. Eric Virey believes that despite the superior performance, the cost of sapphire must be reduced to less than $15 to make mobile phone manufacturers interested.

This is what some industrial sapphire suppliers are doing. In fact, in the past 15 years, the production cost of sapphire has dropped by 10 times. The biggest reason is the increase in production capacity brought about by technological advancement. At the end of 2009, LED displays were successfully applied to large-size TV sets. The demand for sapphire substrates increased significantly, which directly led to the shortage of sapphire production capacity in the next two years. Various suppliers had to make technical improvements to increase production capacity.

In 2001, Rubicon Technologies produced a sapphire wafer weighing only 3.5 kg, and the sheet used to make the substrate after cutting was only 2 inches (about 5 cm) in diameter. Today, Rubicon's sapphire wafers weigh an average of 85 kilograms, up to 200 kilograms, and the diameter of the substrate sheet extends to 6 inches (about 15 cm). “When sapphire substrates are purchased, large size can save cost for LED chip manufacturers, but at the same time, higher technology is required to ensure higher quality while maintaining quality, and cutting and polishing these large-sized sheets. Need more precision," Parvez said.

After the acquisition of Crystal Systems by GTAT, it also has a patented sapphire synthesis technology - ASF furnace. Thanks to its unique and confidential design, the ASF furnace can increase the production capacity of sapphire by 35% in the same size of the mold, which is equivalent to indirect cost reduction, especially suitable for making large sapphire crystals. “The biggest change in the sapphire industry over the past few years has been the continued decline in manufacturing costs,” said Jeff Nestel-Patt, a trend that opens up more possibilities for sapphire applications, such as displays for mobile devices such as smartphones. In May 2013, GTAT received an order to supply sapphire screens for Motorola's new POS machines, which had previously used only tempered glass as a screen material.

Fierce competition is another reason for the decline in sapphire costs. Due to the optimistic outlook for LEDs, over the past three years, 80 companies have been added to the sapphire market, 50 of which are located in China. That's why all manufacturers today are looking for ways to open up new applications and are eager to use sapphire on mobile phones.

From an industry consultancy perspective, Eric Virey expects that the cost of sapphire for smartphone screen manufacturing will drop to around $13 in the next few years. Although it is still more expensive than gorilla glass, superior performance will still attract some high-end intelligence. The phone model is used. "In the next five years, smartphones will mean a new $2 billion market for sapphire manufacturers," Virey said. In some high-end mobile phone markets, sapphire glass will become the main competitor of gorilla glass. Virey expects sapphire penetration in the smartphone display market to reach 5% to 18% by 2018.

For quite some time, Gorilla Glass can also maintain its competitiveness through improved craftsmanship and more economical prices. "The basic physical structure of sapphire is a big obstacle to reducing costs." Wang Zhaoying said. According to Corning's experiments, even on a small percentage of mobile phones, billions of dollars are needed to produce enough sapphire. Corning has also published a lengthy report that proves that the third-generation gorilla glass will perform better than sapphire material due to the use of raw material damage resistance technology.

Raw material damage resistance is an atomic-level technique that improves the atomic arrangement of glass so that their atomic units are not as closely aligned as the original glass components, and the chemical properties inside the raw materials are also different, making the new large The damage resistance of the orangutan glass is further improved. Compared to the second generation of Gorilla Glass, it reduces visible scratches by 40% and causes three times the force required for lateral cracking.

Companies like Rubicon Technologies and GTAT are not planning to drag themselves on to catch up with gorillas for too long. GTAT is currently investing heavily in a wafer production technology called Hyperion Implant, which was originally used to increase the production of silicon wafers and solar cells. GTAT hopes to apply it to the production of sapphire, making the sapphire lining almost thinner than the hair, and can be used together with other relatively more economical materials. GTAT believes that once this technology is commercialized, it will further reduce the cost of sapphire.

"Sapphire is used in touch screens and mobile devices. This is not a problem that will happen, but how fast it is. As the cost drops, I believe this process will continue to accelerate," said Jeff Nestel-Patt. If you let him face Wang Zhaoying, this will be very tit-for-tat. For more and more mobile devices that are on the market, it is certainly a good thing to have a choice of glass on the screen.

The gorilla should be careful.