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Today the company producing the famous Gorilla Glass panels announced the launch Willow Glass, a similar product, but with somewhat more interesting functions. Willow Glass is still a glass panel, but unlike Gorilla Glass it is thinner, just as resistant and can be "wrapped" around objects. Those from Corning designed this product specifically for touch screens, but it can also be used with other types of objects that it protects and that's about it.
Willow Glass is as thin as a sheet of paper (100 microns) and with its help manufacturers could increase the resistance of flexible or curved screens, but maybe we will see something similar in the iPhone 5 considering the terminal is going to be launched in the autumn.
Corning Launches Ultra-Slim Flexible Glass
Corning® Willow™ Glass will help enable new, thinner applications and could revolutionize display manufacturing
CORNING, NY, June 04, 2012 – Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) 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.
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 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.
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.
"Displays become more pervasive each day and manufacturers strive to make both portable devices and larger displays thinner. Corning Willow Glass provides the substrate performance to maintain device quality in a thin and light form factor," said Dr. Dipak Chowdhury, division vice president and Willow Glass program director. "Currently manufacturing in a sheet-to-sheet process, we expect Corning Willow Glass to eventually allow customers to switch to high-throughput, efficient roll-to-roll processing, a long-awaited industry milestone."
Like Corning's other leading-edge glass substrates, including EAGLE XG® Slim and Corning Lotus™ Glass, Corning Willow Glass is produced using the company's proprietary fusion process. Advances in fusion forming have made it possible to produce glass that is 100 microns thick – about the thickness of a sheet of copy paper. Even at that thickness, it provides hermetic sealing to sensitive components, while also providing excellent optical, thermal, and surface properties.
