Bendable Glass

Imagine being able to open up your smartphone screen into a tablet-sized display. Glass manufacturers are already working on producing “foldable” glass, which would allow just that. And although they’re not quite there … they’re very close.

For example, one German manufacturer has developed an ultrathin glass that flexes like plastic and can be made with electronics embedded in it. Continuously manufactured in rolls one-half meter (about 18 inches) wide and half a kilometer (about a quarter of a mile) long, it resembles cellophane and can be folded repeatedly down to a radius of 9 millimeters (about three-eighths of an inch) with no signs of fatigue.

The key to its strength is a down-draw manufacturing process that enables the molten glass to be shaped in a controlled manner. Glass is an amazingly strong material and only breaks as a result of micro-defects that propagate under stress. The new process is capable of producing specialty glass products between 25 and 500 micrometers thick with very few imperfections and a roughness of less than one nanometer. It can also be cured through ion exchange to yield a product that is four times stronger than non-tempered glass.

The first consumer product to utilize the new glass will be a smartphone fingerprint sensor, but the technology will also have applications for faster processors and smaller chip packages that are more thermally and dimensionally stable than current designs while boosting energy efficiency.