Breaking the glass barrier

By Pramod DE SILVA

Common wisdom is that it is hard to be excited about glass. After all, it is an object we take for granted, having existed for around 5,000 years. Glass itself is just a material based largely on silica quartz - we tend to admire various objects made out of it, from drinking glasses to bottles to vases. Glass is also ubiquitous, from the windows in our office building to the LCD TV screen at home. Glass has become an art form too, with glass blowers creating intricate and colourful designs on glass objects.

But glass will not stand still while there are developments in every other sphere. Although it is hard to think of glass as an area of rapid technological evolution - “your drinking glass cannot get any better, right?” it has become one of the key technologies that will bring incredible innovations over the next few years.

Research

I have been fascinated by glass from my childhood and recently did some research on the latest advancements in this field. What I found amazed me, because glass is undergoing a transformation that will make it virtually unrecognisable in the form you already you know - just plain glass. Yes, you will be able to bend it, roll it, curve it, get solar power with it and even get it to clean itself. And that is the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of companies, universities and organisations are working on this glass revolution.

You may not believe this, but the late Steve Jobs was the visionary who started the modern glass revolution. (And you thought he just made the iPhone and the iPad). Being a master of outsourcing and supply chain management, Jobs was looking for a suitable scratch-resistant, tough, lightweight and durable glass for his first touchscreen iPhone just a few years ago from an outside supplier. Corning already had a reputation as one of the most innovative glass companies around, so Jobs called the Corning CEO and explained what he wanted.

Too late

As it turned out, Jobs was around five decades too late. Corning already had just the material Jobs wanted, having invented what is now called Gorilla Glass in the 1960s. At the time, they couldn't find any commercial applications for it so the project just stopped. Corning brought the old '60s project back to life and called it Gorilla Glass. Now, it is the standard for mobile devices and found in 600 million devices from PCs to tablets to televisions.

Just a couple of months ago, Corning went one better with the introduction of Gorilla Glass 2, which is astoundingly thin and even more damage resistant. According to Corning, “Gorilla Glass 2 is as tough and scratch resistant as ever to withstand the unexpected abuses of everyday life. But now it's thinner, enabling slimmer and sleeker devices, brighter images, and greater touch sensitivity”. The Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone is one of the latest gadgets to feature Gorilla Glass 2.

But Corning, which incidentally has the world’s biggest glass museum with over 45,000 objects, did not want to rest on its laurels. Its latest product “Willow Glass” unveiled last week, is even more astonishing. Willow’s Unique Selling Proposition is its sheer flexibility - it can be rolled and bent. It is about as thick and flexible as a piece of paper, while having the strength, durability and other qualities of existing Gorilla Glass.

Willow Glass can be made as thin as 0.05mm, which is far thinner than the current 0.2mm or 0.5mm display glass, including Gorilla Glass 2. Because of its thinness and malleability, Willow Glass could revolutionise the form and shape of smartphones, TVs, tablets, and other consumer electronic devices. Handheld devices, for example, will be thinner and lighter. Dipak Chowdhury, Corning's Willow Glass program director says some of its uses cannot even be foreseen yet.

Indeed, because it's thin, cost-efficient and lightweight, Willow Glass could be incorporated in a variety of slim displays, as well as products that haven't yet been invented. It also has potential applications in the solar cell and lighting industries. It could be used for curved displays that can be mounted on non-flat surfaces or for giving viewers an immersive experience. We could also see new types of laptops, netbooks or Ultrabooks with flexible screens. ‘Flexibook’, anyone?

Hermetic seal

Corning says that Willow Glass has the same ability as other types of glass to provide a hermetic seal for sensitive electronic components, and it also provides the same touch, feel and other properties of glass. Corning is currently shipping Willow Glass to designers and manufacturers for developing new applications.

Moreover, the company had just announced another new (flat) glass technology that kills bacteria and viruses. This will be great especially for medical applications.

Although Steve Jobs outsourced the glass for his iPhone, his fascination with glass meant that Apple also continued research on glass. The result is Apple ‘Curved Glass’. It will be like Willow, but on a much bigger scale - for buildings and houses.

This will be seen in Apple’s proposed “spaceship” campus, where there wouldn't be a single piece of straight glass in the entire building. Apple is serious about this, having purchased hundreds of special-purpose machines for the factory manufacturing of curved-glass displays and construction glass panels. Some say the iPhone would eventually become a curved-glass device.

Technology

If Apple can get into glasses, why not Google, literally? Google’s technology involves special glasses which use glass and mirrors to project a computer display onto one eye, creating the illusion that relevant information is floating in the air. Wireless connectivity and artificial intelligence enables you to conjure up facts, see things in its context, send messages by voice and even take pictures by blinking. Google's research is moving fast.

And they will also be see-through. Microsoft has developed a display technology that uses transparent display glass, called the see-through 3D desktop. At present, however, it uses the Microsoft SmartGlass moniker to refer to a second screen application for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which gives developers the potential to turn smartphones and tablets into a controller for the Xbox 360. 

Universities cannot relax while glass companies and tech companies steal the limelight – enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an anti-glare glass. Glass is shiny and causes glare, which makes screens harder to read in bright light. It also reduces the efficiency of solar cells. MIT researchers have now solved the glare problem. The glass has a revolutionary surface pattern made of nano-scale cones of glass.

Reflection

The new glass is called multifunctional glass. It's very clear, without glare or reflection. Moreover, the glass also deflects water.

Car windshields using the glass would not (theoretically) need windshield wipers. Solar cells under multifunctional glass would be self-cleaning and would enable more light to penetrate through the glass to the cells. Smartphones, tablets, laptops and TVs would be essentially self-cleaning.

Talking of solar cells, the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, New Energy Technologies has developed ultra-thin solar cells that use see-through ‘SolarWindow’ glass. Most of today’s solar cells are opaque, with minimal efficiency. The technology could see a commercial launch in a couple of years.

To generate electricity on SolarWindow prototypes, researchers layer and arrange unique, ultra-thin see-through solar cells on to glass. Each of these cells is arranged in a network and interconnected by way of a virtually invisible grid-like wiring system. It is the world's first technology capable of generating electricity on see-through glass windows.

There is a lot of research going on for glass.

It is one thing we cannot do without and just a couple of years from now, we may see glass products we cannot even imagine now. Raise your glass to technology!