Corning launches can-stand-the-heat Lotus glass for phones

Sheet hot

One of the key brand names tossed around in relation to smartphone and tablets this year has been Corning's Gorilla Glass. Next year, it may be Lotus Glass.

Corning announced Lotus' commercial availability yesterday, and immediately began touting the display material's suitability for "cutting-edge technologies", including OLED and LCD screens on mobile gadgets.

The manufacturer's pitch is that Lotus' thermal characteristics: it has "a high annealing point that delivers the thermal and dimensional stability… and because of its intrinsic stability, it can withstand the thermal cycles of customer processing better than conventional LCD glass substrates".

In English: it doesn't distort if it gets hot, ensuring that it's good for manufacturing processes that use high temperatures to bond other display components to the glass.

Scientifically, its coefficient of thermal expansion from 0-300°C is a mere 33.9 x 10^-7 per ° C.

That makes is much more practical to mount components on the glass itself, eliminating extra layers in the screen sandwich to produce thinner yet no less tough displays.

Corning will offer 2.2 x 2.5m sheets of Lotus Glass in 0.5, 0.6 and 0.7mm thicknesses, ready to be cut to your favourite phone screen size. ®