Gorilla Glass

Gorilla Glass is a brand of specialized toughened glass developed and manufactured by Corning, now in its fifth generation, designed to be thin, light and damage-resistant. Gorilla Glass is unique to Corning; but close equivalents exist, including Asahi Glass Co. Dragontrail and Schott AG Xensation.

The alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass is used primarily as cover glass for portable electronic devices, including mobile phones, portable media players, portable computer displays, and television screens. It is manufactured in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, US; Asan, Korea; and Taiwan.

The glass gains its surface strength, ability to contain flaws, and crack-resistance by being immersed in a proprietary, hot potassium salt ion-exchange bath.

Corning experimented with chemically strengthened glass in 1960, as part of a "Project Muscle" initiative. Within a few years they had developed a "muscled glass" marketed as Chemcor. The product was used until the early 1990s in commercial and industrial applications, including automotive, aviation and pharmaceutical uses, notably in approximately one hundred 1968 Dodge Dart and Plymouth Barracuda racing cars, where minimizing the vehicle's weight was essential. Experimentation was revived in 2005, investigating whether the glass could be made thin enough for use in consumer electronics. It was brought into commercial use when Apple asked Corning for a thin, toughened glass; it was used in the new iPhone.

Corning further developed the material for a variety of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices for a range of companies.

The manufacturer markets the material's primary properties as its high scratch-resistance (protective coating) and its hardness (with a Vickers hardness test rating of 622 to 701), which allows the glass to be thin without fragility. It can be recycled.

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