This article is more than 1 year old

You'll go APE for our new Gorilla Glass 4, Corning reckons

Mythbusters team whored out to promote 'Glass Age'

Corning has unveiled the fourth iteration of its Gorilla Glass – and claims the new see-through substance is twice as damage resistant as its previous version. It's also much better at surviving drops onto hard surfaces, apparently.

Gorilla Glass version is used in the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy lines, plus shedloads of other smartphones and tablets.

"With Gorilla Glass 4, we have focused on significantly improving protection against sharp contact damage, which is the primary reason that mobile devices break," said James Steiner, general manager of Corning Specialty Materials. "Dropping and breaking a phone is a common problem, and one that our customers have asked us to help address."

To make the glass so strong the Corning team drew inspiration from 17th Century Dutch glassmakers who discovered a technique for making super-strong glass called Dutch Tears, or Prince Rupert's Drops.

These are formed when drops of molten glass fall into water, which rapidly cools the outer glass shell while the interior cools more slowly and contracts. This contraction applies compressive tension to the outside layer of glass, making it strong enough to resist shattering under heavy impacts.

Corning has taken the principles of compressive tension to Gorilla Glass by altering the chemistry of the surface layer of its see-through sheets to add compressive tension. The result is glass that will survive a one-metre drop onto a hard surface 80 per cent of the time.

Youtube video

To promote the new glass, Corning has hired Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters to shoot a 20-minute advert for the new glass, extolling the current era as The Age of Glass and smashing things in slomo – albeit with a warning not to try this at home. ®

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