The Future of Electronic Displays is Here with Gorilla Glass

For several years now, Corning has been producing a technology that was shelved many years ago. Gorilla Glass, as they have named it, is an amazingly strong and scratch resistant material that is already making its way into many of the devices that we already use, and there will definitely be more to come. The story of this technology is actually quite interesting. It was developed in the 1960's as Corning was trying to find a new and improved glass that was shatter and crack resistant. They discovered Chemcor. While Chemcor was a hit in the aviation and automotive fields, it had little practical application. It was not until 2007 that the concept was revisited. With all of the new LCD screens and Hi-Def devices emerging on the market, many consumers were complaining about the frailty of the devices, and of screens in particular. This prompted Corning to launch the Gorilla team. This team of scientists and engineers was able to make Chemcor thinner, clearer, and even stronger than before. This was the birth of Gorilla Glass.

Just having a stronger display on devices may not sound like much, and you would be right to not really care what type of cover is on your screen. While having a device or TV with Gorilla Glass in it is nice, but many of us would not care or even notice if something else was used. The real news for the technology world is what this glass can mean for the future of computing and displays. The Gorilla team is working on embedding fiber optic and electronic wiring directly into the glass. This means that you could have a transparent display. The possibilities to this are endless. Imagine using a window in your home as a TV. When you are not watching, it is a normal window, when you are the screen comes alive with the picture. You could also have a transparent computer screen. Imagine a tablet PC that is simply a piece of glass. For the wearable PC world, this would be a major jump. You could incorporate a computer screen into a pair of eyeglasses. This would eliminate the need for bulky goggles or clip on monitors. You could have something that you can actually wear instead of the heavier existing technology.

The world of technology may not be the only people to utilize this glass either. With its amazing durability and strength, it may be put together in plates for thinner and more effective bullet proof glass or as the wall for cages in zoos. One thing that would be truly amazing is to create skywalks and platforms with this stuff. Imagine being able to walk, seemingly on thin air. The Empire State Building or Sear's Tower could also create platforms for people to walk out on and appear like they are floating in the sky. While there is existing glass for this, Gorilla is much thinner and more transparent, so it would make this illusion more realistic.

The big hurdle in how fast this moves is how inexpensive Corning is willing to make it for. If they can mass produce this stuff at an affordable price, it may replace glass in almost every application. Of course, embedding it with the wiring and circuits required to power a computer would be quite a bit more costly and will not be available in the near future, the price will eventually lower enough that this may be the future of all glass. For now, Gorilla Glass may work its way into all aspects of glass use. Aviation, automotive, pharmaceutical, opthamological, and even home improvement uses could really benefit from the use of this glass. Currently, it is only being produced for mobile devices and TV screens, but there is so much more that can be done with this. There are a lot of advancements that could easily happen with this glass. It will be interesting to see what the people at Corning come up with. It would be nice to see it expand past the mobile market, but with such high demand for smart phones and tablets, that may never come. It really amounts to how much of this stuff Corning wants to produce.