This is a sponsored post with Mums the Word Network and Corning Incorporated. All opinions are my own!
I travel a lot and you will see me taking out my smartphone to take pictures of the places we are visiting or the plates of food we are eating. My phone goes from my purse to my hand so many times during the day and it sure does take a beating. One thing I am always worried about is dropping my phone and cracking my screen! I have seen what dropping a phone can do to a screen, it happened to my sister.
Have you heard about Corning® Gorilla® Glass 4 made by Corning Incorporated? The cover glass used by billions of devices worldwide, Corning Gorilla Glass, features exceptional damage resistance and helps protect our precious electronic devices from everyday wear and tear. We as consumers want our cell phones to be sleek, thinner but we also want them to be more durable because of the everyday abuse that our phones take.
Gorilla Glass 4 is the toughest cover glass yet. It performs up to 2x better than any of the competitive glass designs in other devices that dropped from 3 feet high. In laboratory tests, Gorilla Glass 4 survives up to 80% of the time when dropped from 3 feet high, and was up to 2x tougher than competitive glass designs. Corning Gorilla Glass dramatically improves protection against drops. Giving us a little peace of mind when we drop our phones is that Gorilla Glass helps protect our phones from damage. When Corning Incorporated developed Gorilla Glass 4, the focus was on improving damage resistance against sharp contact, such as a drop on asphalt, concrete, and other rough surfaces.
Gorilla Glass has two processes that it goes through, below is a little about them.
Fusion Process
This extraordinarily precise, highly automated draw process produces a thin sheet cover glass with pristine surface quality, outstanding optical clarity and inherent dimensional stability – qualities essential for cover glass for consumer applications.
The process begins when raw materials are blended into a glass composition, which is melted and conditioned. The molten glass is fed into a trough called an “isopipe,” overfilling until the glass flows evenly over both sides. It then rejoins, or fuses, at the bottom, where it is drawn down to form a continuous sheet of flat glass that is so thin it is measured in microns. The glass is untouched by human hands or anything else that will introduce flaws into the surface.
This same fusion process is at the heart of Corning’s industry-leading LCD glass. The composition of Gorilla Glass enables a deep layer of chemical strengthening through an ion-exchange process where individual glass parts are cut from the “mother sheet” and undergo an ion-exchange process.
Ion-Exchange Process
Ion exchange is a chemical strengthening process where large ions are “stuffed” into the glass surface, creating a state of compression. Gorilla Glass is specially designed to maximize this behavior. The glass is placed in a hot bath of molten salt at a temperature of approximately 400 degrees C. Smaller sodium ions leave the glass, and larger potassium ions from the salt bath replace them. These large ions take up more room and are pressed together when the glass cools, producing a layer of compressive stress on the surface of the glass. Gorilla Glass’ composition enables the potassium ions to diffuse far into the surface, creating high compressive stress deep into the glass. This layer of compression creates the surface that is more resistant to damage.
What do you think of Gorilla Glass? Is it on your device?