As most of us know from our materials courses or even just breaking some at home, glass is a very brittle material. It is not forgiving to those who try to bend it, flex it or roll it (at room temperature, of course). However, at the beginning of this month, Corning Inc., the creators of Gorilla Glass, released a new product called Willow Glass. Willow Glass is flexible and can be rolled without breaking.
The major advantage between Willow Glass and regular glass is the changes that it presents to the manufacturing process of many technologies. At a thickness of 100 to 200 microns, Willow Glass can be produced by the roll, much like the newsprint paper used for The Iron Warrior. This thickness does not take away from the glass’ ability to form a hermetic seal for sensitive components. In roll form, Willow Glass can transform the manufacturing of devices by allowing for roll-to-roll processes as opposed to sheet-to-sheet processes thereby significantly increasing the efficiency of the manufacturing process.
The flexibility of the glass comes at little cost to the typical properties of glass. For instance, Willow Glass still has a processing temperature of up to 500 degrees Celsius. It also retains very similar Young’s Modulus and Poisson ratio values to Gorilla Glass. This is very promising for the scratch resistance and general strength of the glass, however, it is not intended to be put up against the same physical trauma that Gorilla glass has been known to withstand.
One of the many potential uses for a technology like this is high end LCD displays. The high processing temperature makes it highly preferred over other flexible plastics. Another emerging technology that it could be used for is Organic-LEDs. With the super thin and flexible nature of the glass, thinner and lighter technologies are possible. More importantly, these new technologies will not be limited by the stiffness of conventional glass. The potential for mass production of flexible displays is all of a sudden much more feasible.
Another major area where Willow Glass could make its mark is with solar and lighting technologies. The glass will drastically change the production of solar cells and potentially reduce the price of the everyday solar cell to something more palatable by everyday people. Another neat property is that with an Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) coating Willow Glass experiences close to no reflectance, which is another area of improvement for solar and lighting technologies.
Willow Glass is expected to appear first in smartphones, tablets and laptops. As time goes on, Corning Inc. will approach the solar and lighting technology industries.
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