“Apple discussed forming screens from super-hard ‘sapphire glass’ 18 months ago with experts in the field, making a sapphire-fronted iPhone 6 highly likely, The Guardian has established,” Samuel Gibbs reports for The Guardian.
“A video that apparently shows a 4.7in sapphire screen being bent under a foot and resisting attack from a knife and keys ‘could well be’ legitimate, according to Professor Neil Alford of the department of materials at Imperial College, London,” Gibbs reports. “‘I think Apple have been quite cunning,” Alford told The Guardian. ‘What I think they’ve done is make a screen out of sapphire, which is incredibly scratch resistant, incredibly hard and has a high elastic modulus – meaning it’s very stiff.'”
“Apple has a multi-year joint venture in the US with GT Advanced to build plants and furnaces able to produce sapphire in industrial quantities for a ‘critical component’ that it said in trade documents would be shipped abroad for assembly. That could refer to the touch sensors – or to screens,” Gibbs reports. “‘I remember the Apple folk coming to speak to me about 18 months ago to discuss sapphire screens,’ remarked Alford. ‘They’ve obviously been busy since then, working with a sapphire manufacturer… ‘It’s not a surprising thing to do, but it’s quite a large area they’re producing and that’s really quite a challenge. I’m pretty impressed with that, actually.'”
Gibbs reports, “Apple and its sapphire manufacturing partner are likely to have patented manufacturing processes for creating the sapphire screens meaning that other manufactures like Corning, producer of Gorilla Glass, might not be able to replicate the sapphire screens.”
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