New invention of scientists
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If mass-produced and brought to market, high-end smartphone screens would probably stop shattering when dropped.
Scientists have created a new type of glass that is five times more crack-resistant than standard glass and could ultimately end broken phone screens.
What kind of material?
A glass-acrylic composite material that offers a combination of strength, stiffness and transparency was developed by researchers at McGill University in Montreal in Canada. The tougher glass is inspired by the inner layer of clam shells called mother-of-pearl, which at the micro-scale resembles a wall of intertwined Lego bricks.
Although it is glass, the new material has a resilience that is more like plastic and does not shatter on impact, the researchers said. If mass-produced and brought to market, high-end smartphone screens would probably stop shattering when dropped.
“Surprisingly, mother-of-pearl has the toughness of a tough material and the strength of a soft material, giving it the best of both worlds,” said Allen Ehrlicher, assistant professor of bioengineering at McGill University. sometimes schematics for new materials. “
Glass that will change the world?
While techniques such as tempering and laminating can help harden standard glass in modern phones, they are expensive and stop working if the surface is damaged. “Until now, there has been a trade-off between high strength, stiffness and transparency,” said Professor Ehrlicher. “Our new material is not only three times stronger than conventional glass, but also more than five times more resistant to fracture.”
Mother-of-pearl is composed of hexagonal or square plates of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) and resembles a brick wall. Scientists took mother-of-pearl architecture and reproduced it with layers of glass and acrylic flakes, resulting in an “exceptionally durable” opaque material that can be produced easily and inexpensively. They then went further to make the composite optically transparent by changing the refractive index of the acrylic material. The refractive index indicates how the speed of light changes as it travels between different media.
“By adjusting the refractive index of the acrylic, we made it blend smoothly with the glass to create a truly transparent composite,” said lead author Ali Amini, a university researcher.
“The fabrication method is robust and scalable, and the composite could provide an alternative to glass in a variety of applications,” the scientists said in an article published in Science.
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