Sapphire PK Gorilla Glass: As a screen who has the advantage?

In the past year, the word sapphire frequently appeared in front of people. Perhaps we have been taught a sense: Corning Gorilla Glass in front of the sapphire has become obsolete! According to media reports, Apple will use sapphire screen in its next generation iphone, and plans to produce more than 200 million sapphire panels to prepare for the upcoming iPhone6. In addition, the media has also released demo video to show the Unbreakable sapphire screen: Cut, fold, fall, the sapphire screen is still intact. But what we see is appearances, and few of us have a comprehensive, accurate understanding of the substance, and we rarely know the difference between it and the Gorilla Glass. What is a sapphire? How was it made? First, Sapphire is a gem that exists in nature in different forms and colours. Red sapphires are often called rubies, and blue sapphires are usually processed into jewellery. However, there are also some sapphires that are transparent, so this kind of sapphire can be used on the smartphone display. What's so special about sapphire? Sapphire is currently one of the most hard material on earth, its molar hardness value of 9 (the highest molar hardness of 10), after the diamond hardness (10), which means that only with the same hardness of diamonds can damage to sapphire. So unless you have a diamond in your pocket, the Sapphire display cell in your pocket will take months without any scratches on the screen. If Apple sells more than 30 million iphones a quarter, that means Apple needs a lot of sapphire orders. Apple will certainly not choose to dig the sapphire itself, and the possible way is to make artificial sapphires. The production process of sapphire is very interesting, it needs to burn the furnace temperature to 1815 degrees Celsius, so that the size of the diamond gem and alumina powder mix. As a comparison, Corning Gorilla Glass is a kind of tempered glass, but it is still a mystery how Corning can improve its hardness. As far as we know, a piece of glass immersed in a basin of salt water, the latter can make the structure of the glass overall contraction, so that more hardness of the Gorilla Glass. So the problem comes out: when we accidentally scratch the phone screen with other hard objects, the phone, if accidentally dropped on the ground, may crack from scratch. Sapphire is a brittle material in essence, although it is indestructible. This means that the future configuration of the sapphire glass display cell phone on the floor, the screen can still be broken. Again with the data to illustrate the problem: we all know that the molar hardness of sapphire is 9, and the molar hardness of glass is 5, and the former fracture toughness of 2.3mpa√m, almost 3 times times the glass of Corning gorilla. In addition, if the elasticity and hardness of the index, sapphire glass is more than a chip. Interestingly, the blue glass density is larger than glass, the former is 3.98g/cm3, the latter is 2.54 g/cm3, which means thatUnder the same mass, the sapphire is smaller than the glass and the thickness becomes smaller. Cost and potential uses one of the biggest hurdles that companies have to overcome when applying sapphire displays is the cost, knowing that sapphires cost several times as much as glass. Yes, many of the weaknesses of the Gorilla Glass are exposed when compared to sapphires, but the latter has a cost advantage, a Corning Gorilla Glass cost about 3 U.S. dollars (about 18 yuan), and a sapphire screen cost of 25 U.S. dollars (about 154 yuan) around. However, according to industry sources, the current cost of sapphire screen has been controlled by 10 U.S. dollars (about 61 yuan) below. Apple has spent 700 million dollars (about 4.3 billion yuan) building a new factory in Arizona, State Mesa, the United States, as a future processing plant for sapphire materials. The plant is expected to double the current global production of artificial sapphire, when the sapphire touch screen price will be further lowered, and eventually can be used in our daily use of smartphones.