glass is useful for many things like Windows vision correction and liquor
bottles but it's not exactly known for its durability so a while ago we made a
video explaining how manufacturers use toughened glass for gadgets like phones
tablets and smart watches that need to be able to stand up to everyday drops
and scratches you can check that video out up here but for today's video we're
going to look at the improvements that have been made to this technology in
2020 to do so we reached out to our friends at corning who control a huge
amount of the smartphone glass market and we'd like to thank dr jamin amin
their technology lead for his time and insight so obviously although toughened
glass is a lot stronger than what they use in soda bottles it's still
far from perfect and a roaring trade exists in repairing cracked phone
screens so plenty of time and money are
still being poured into developing ever tougher screen glass one of the
fundamental concepts used in strengthening glass is ion exchange
basically what happens here is that the glass is dipped into a bath of potassium
salts heated to around 400 degrees celsius this causes potassium ions to
take the place of smaller sodium ions that were already present in the glass
because the potassium ions are larger it causes compressive stress which makes
the microscopic structure of the glass stronger and less vulnerable to
scratching or breaking but despite this process having been around for some time
companies are still trying to find ways to improve it corning for example has
recently announced a new gorilla glass product called victus which is supposed
to provide drop protection from up to two meters or a little over six feet
scratch resistance of up to seven to ten newtons and withstanding force of over
one hundred kilograms in an area of less than two centimeters square before it'll
break that is a lot more than you'll probably ever put on your phone unless
of course you step on it or give it the people's elbow so
how did they do it well part of the process involved going deeper into the
glass to increase compressive stress like by giving the glass a second ion
bath which allows for ion displacement further down into the glass than a
single treatment corning is also starting the process with a stronger
glass in the first place before ion displacement even begins although
unfortunately many of the specifics as to exactly what chemicals and methods
they're using are trade secrets they weren't exactly willing to share with us
what we can tell you though is that it looks like gorilla glass won't be using
sapphire glass which apple was once interested in anytime soon
unlike more conventional glasses which are amorphous solids sapphire glass is
crystalline meaning that it has a regular structure at the molecular level
this makes sapphire glass very hard but also quite brittle which isn't exactly a
quality that you want on phone glass for obvious reasons
but then if victus glass isn't completely reinventing the wheel does
that mean we can expect it on our devices very soon well samsung has already introduced one
phone with the new glass so it shouldn't be long before it becomes more
widespread but before you rush out and buy something new because you want a
more durable phone there is one piece of inside baseball that you should know
that phone manufacturers sometimes hide from the consumer
toughened glasses are tested and rated at certain standard thicknesses and
sometimes this is what phone manufacturers do in fact end up using
but other times they might order a new generation of glass but ask to have it
cut down to be thinner helping to meet consumer demand for light thin devices
at the cost of taking away some of the glass's strength
so if you see a phone that uses a new generation of toughened glass but lots
of reviews that indicate that it might be fragile
that could be the culprit or of course people might just be treating their
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techwiki so don't wait go check out freshbooks today thanks for watching
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