Why Apple to create sapphire glass display

On February 10th news, according to foreign media reports, the day before the news that apple is investing in the production of sapphire glass manufacturing, is expected to be used in the next generation of iPhone display screen. Business Insider, former special author of sapphire made a simple science.

What is a sapphire?

The mineral name of sapphire, called corundum, is a very hard material, optically transparent and generally looks like glass or diamond.

Sapphire is very precious?

There are many forms of sapphire, one of which is often referred to as precious stones. In fact, there are many kinds of colors, including yellow, pink, orange, green, red and so on. Red sapphire is also often referred to as ruby, the more common sapphire are blue.

Is the screen made of sapphire blue?

Sapphire presents a different color because of the impurities, sapphire contains iron, titanium, chromium, copper, magnesium and other metals to make it a different color. Sapphire crystal used in the display screen is purified, the purity is very high, so there is no color.

Sapphire glass for what purpose?

Most of the artificial sapphire are used in industrial production processes, some color sapphire for laser applications. Red sapphires contain titanium and chromium, so they can be adjusted to the appropriate wavelength and are often used to make infrared lasers.

Sapphire glass is also used in the manufacture of protective glass windows, such as bullet proof glass and glass windows for high pressure diagnostic and scientific equipment. Supermarket commonly used bar code scanner outside the cover of the glass object is also a sapphire glass.

The most common use of sapphire glass is used in the manufacture of exceptionally strong and scratch resistant lenses or watch glasses. Rolex's mirror is a very thick layer of sapphire glass. Apple iPhone 5S home key and TouchID fingerprint sensor is also covered with a laser cut sapphire glass lens.

Sapphire glass in the future may be used on what purpose?

Some high-end smartphones have been using sapphire glass display. For example, handmade Vertu Ti, with a 3.7 inch sapphire glass display, but for now, the cost of sapphire glass screen is not suitable for mass production of smart phones.

There are reports that Apple hopes to replace the current use of sapphire glass screen iPhone. News from the supply chain, Apple has acquired the production of sapphire display hardware and factories, enough to supply the future iPhone production needs.

Why sapphire glass to replace the traditional glass?

Compared to ordinary glass, sapphire glass is much more difficult, in terms of resistance is far from winning. These two features are important for the display and camera lens.

The industry generally uses the Mohs unit to measure the hardness of the material. Talc has a hardness of 1 and a diamond with a Mohs scale of about 10. Glass is generally 5.5 to 7 Mohs, while the hardness of sapphire glass reached the size of 9 Mohs, only a little worse than the diamond. In other words, the vast majority of objects are less than the hardness of sapphire glass, it is difficult to scratch sapphire glass as the material of the phone screen.

At present, a lot of smart phones are using Corelle gorilla glass to make the display, such as Google Nexus 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4. Corelle gorilla glass hardness has not been announced, but generally speculated about 7 mohs.

What is the cost of sapphire glass display?

Sapphire glass is not widely used in the manufacture of smart phone display, a large part of the reason is that the cost is too high. Corelle said that the manufacturing cost of sapphire glass display is 10 times more than Corelle gorilla glass.

If Apple really want to use sapphire glass screen in the next generation of iPhone, so we must greatly reduce manufacturing cost, because the next generation of iPhone pricing will generally and now at iPhone 5S sold little difference.

In the smart phone display material, sapphire glass competitors?

Corelle is the most famous gorilla glass, Corelle has launched the third generation gorilla glass, many smart phone brands are using this material to create a display screen. Gorilla glass is actually a kind of hydrochloric acid glass, has the characteristics of impact and scratch, in addition to the gorilla glass phone screen is often very thin.

Japan's Asahi Corporation is the world's second largest glass products company, the company launched the Dragon (Dragontail) glass has similar characteristics and gorilla glass, SONY Xperia Z1 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus have adopted this screen material.