Move Over Gorilla Glass, Corning Inc. Unveils Ultra-Thin, Flexible Willow Glass

 Materials

Corning has introduced a new 100-micron-thick Willow Glass, an ultra-thin and flexible substrate for LCDs and OLEDs. The extreme thinness of the glass should lead to lighter, svelter devices, but it also means that shape is no longer a barrier for design. In fact, Corning expects Willow Glass will eventually lead substrates to be manufactured "roll-to-roll" instead of "sheet-to-sheet" -- similar to how newspapers are printed.

C orning Incorporated, makers of the widely-used Gorilla Glass announced the launch of Corning® Willow™ Glass, an ultra-slim flexible glass, which could revolutionize the shape and form of next-generation consumer electronic technologies.

The company made the announcement today at the Society for Information Display’s Display Week, an industry tradeshow in Boston.

Corning Willow Glass will help enable thin, light and cost-efficient applications including today’s slim displays and the smart surfaces of the future. The thinness, strength, and flexibility of the glass has the potential to enable displays to be “wrapped” around a device or structure.

As well, Corning Willow Glass can be processed at temperatures up to 500° C. High temperature processing capability is essential for today’s high end displays, and is a processing condition that cannot be supported with polymer films. Corning Willow Glass will enable the industry to pursue high-temperature, continuous “roll-to-roll” processes – similar to how newsprint is produced - that have been impossible until now.

It will support thinner backplanes and color filters for both organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and liquid crystal displays (LCD) in high performance, portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, and notebook computers. This new, ultra-slim flexible glass will also help develop conformable (curved) displays for immersive viewing or mounting on non-flat surfaces.

Corning Willow Glass is formulated to perform exceptionally well for electronic components such as touch sensors, as well as leveraging glass’s natural hermetic properties as a seal for OLED displays and other moisture and oxygen-sensitive technologies.

With this development, Corning is expected to get a jump on production prior to development of commercially viable graphene-based solutions for electronics screens.

SOURCE  Corning

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square