Gorilla Glass has been a major selling point for toughened smartphones of late, but the fast-paced world of glass design doesn’t sit still for long. Gorilla Glass is yesterday; tomorrow’s glass is Corning’s new Lotus Glass.
Promising better “thermal and dimensional stability” — which to me sounds rather like a throwaway line from an episode of Doctor Who — Lotus Glass has a higher annealing point than Gorilla Glass, giving it better overall structural stability than Gorilla Glass. Given it’s pretty hard to damage Gorilla Glass already, this is pretty tough stuff.
Corning’s release quotes Andrew Filson, worldwide commercial director, Display Technologies, and vice president, Corning Holding Japan GK as stating that
Because of its intrinsic stability, it can withstand the thermal cycles of customer processing better than conventional LCD glass substrates. This enables tighter design rules in advanced backplanes for higher resolution and faster response time.”
Corning states that it’s in production now, but we’re yet to hear of a smartphone manufacturer touting that it’s using Lotus glass. Anyone want to take bets as to who the first Lotus Glass vendor will be? [Corning via Wired]
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