What good is a sapphire screen?

All along, the choice and use of mobile phone materials are major manufacturers and users of the hot topic of discussion, from the early plastic materials to metal materials, and then to aerospace alloys and leather materials, and so on, these materials in the market, also have been recognized by the majority of users and popularization. Recently, the mobile phone industry has again set off a debate about a new material-sapphire glass. For this unfamiliar new material, its characteristics, for manufacturers and users, what can bring? So let's take a look at the details of Sapphire technology and its products.

About Sapphire

Let's take a brief look at the real sapphires, the precious stones that are displayed in jewellery shops and inlaid in the crown of the ancient royal family. According to the GEM data, the mineral name of Sapphire is corundum, which belongs to Corundum-group minerals. The main component is alumina, which is blue because of the trace element Titanium (ti4+) or iron (fe2+). belong to the tri-square crystal system. Crystal morphology is often cylindrical, short columnar, plate shape, etc., geometry is more granular or dense block.

In fact, the gem-grade corundum in nature, except for the Red Ruby, the rest of the colors such as blue, light blue, green, yellow, gray, colorless, etc., are called sapphire. And the origin of sapphire in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Laos, Cambodia, China Shandong Changle, Hainan, Chongqing Jiangjin of Stalagmite Mountain are found, the most rare place of origin should belong to Kashmir's sapphire, and Burma is now the highest production of fine sapphires.

In the Gem category, diamond hardness of 10, but also the most hard material in nature. The hardness of Sapphire, Ruby and Emerald is 9, and its hardness is relatively high. And the hardness of the knife metal is only 5 to 6. Therefore, in the market, a lot of consumers in the identification of gem products, usually use knife tool tools to test through the draw. This is one of the most direct and intuitive test methods.

Sapphire glass

Because the hardness of sapphire is second only to the diamond, the technology manufacturers can achieve better hardness performance than traditional chemical-enhanced glass by purifying its elements and applying it to some transparent glass panels. According to what we have learned, the hardness of Sapphire is 9, and the hardness of glass is 5, and the fracture toughness of the former is 2.3mpa√m, almost 3 to 4 times times that of ordinary glass.

In addition to the extremely high hardness, Sapphire also has excellent electrical and dielectric properties, and has chemical corrosion, high temperature, good thermal conductivity, high hardness, through infrared, chemical stability and so on. Therefore, in some industrial fields, many instruments commonly used it to replace other optical materials to make optical elements, through infrared optical window and so on. In addition, sapphire glass is also widely used in infrared and far-infrared military equipment, such as: used in night vision infrared and far-infrared sights, night vision cameras and other instruments and satellites, space technology instrumentation, as well as high-power laser windows, various optical prisms, optical windows, UV and IR windows and lenses, The observation port of low temperature experiment is fully applied in the high precision instruments and meters of navigation and aerospace.

Sapphire glass does have a great advantage, if applied in the mobile phone industry, can really improve the mobile phone screen scratch-resistant, but at present, the sapphire glass to be popular, it seems to take some time. According to industry professionals, sapphire glass in the production process, extremely complex, compared to ordinary glass need to spend 4,000 times times more time to produce, temperature requirements are much higher than ordinary glass, and because of the hardness of sapphire glass, the production process is also more difficult. If there is a mistake in the furnace, the cost of late cutting will "increase exponentially".

For the current handset industry manufacturers, sapphire glass is determined to have a high marketing gimmick, but the real promotion, but also based on the glass manufacturers of technology and capacity, as the iphone 6 before the release of the internet there are many rumors that Apple or will be the next generation of products using sapphire glass, but after the launch, The biggest reason why the iphone 6, which is made of sapphire glass, has not been seen, is because of the technical difficulties of the sapphire glass maker, which has caused the company to end up in debt and declare bankruptcy.

At present, although some manufacturers have introduced the use of sapphire glass mobile phone products, such as Vivo issued X5 Sapphire Limited privilege version, etc., from the product naming we can see, "limited privilege version" is not representative of large-scale promotion, while, in terms of price, Vivo X5 Sapphire Limited Privilege version of the price is also higher than the ordinary version of nearly hundreds of yuan, which shows that the production of sapphire glass is very low probability, at the same time, in terms of cost, also compared to ordinary glass high. Therefore, some manufacturers may launch some so-called "limited edition" according to the market strategy, but they cannot carry out mass production and promotion.

Summary: Sapphire glass does have a very high advantages and characteristics, in the industrial and military aspects, and indeed has been widely recognized, but in the consumer sector, due to the technology is immature, low yield can not carry out mass production and so on factors, which has become the biggest barrier to the popularity of sapphire glass. But believe in the future, sapphire glass in the breakthrough after a lot of difficulties, it will be in the mobile phone industry and the entire consumer sector to set off a new glass market revolutionary changes.