Corning's Willow Glass Aims To Protect Next-Gen Electronics

Gorilla Glass. Heard of it? Sure you have. It's on loads of smartphones these days, and it's widely regarded as one of the most significant mobile technologies in the past few years. Willow Glass is the company's next great product, an ultra-slim flexible glass designed for the next generation of consumer electronics. The thinness, strength, and flexibility of the glass has the potential to enable displays to be "wrapped" around a device or structure. As well, Corning Willow Glass can be processed at temperatures up to 500° C. High temperature processing capability is essential for today's high end displays, and is a processing condition that cannot be supported with polymer films. Corning Willow Glass will enable the industry to pursue high-temperature, continuous "roll-to-roll" processes – similar to how newsprint is produced - that have been impossible until now.


It will support thinner backplanes and color filters for both organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and liquid crystal displays (LCD) in high performance, portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, and notebook computers. This new, ultra-slim flexible glass will also help develop conformable (curved) displays for immersive viewing or mounting on non-flat surfaces.


No word on when we'l see devices rocking this stuff, but the clumsy among us agree: it can't come soon enough.