Gadgetory

everybody it's michael fisher with pocket now I'm in Salem Massachusetts at the facilities of GT crystal systems a company that's trying to make your smartphone display a little bit harder to scratch using sapphire let's find out how they do it if you watched our coverage from MWC in Barcelona you might remember a demo by Jeff Nestle Pat of GT advanced technologies showcasing a smartphone display two-and-a-half times stronger than Gorilla Glass that was for all intents and purposes unscratched ball it turns out the primary GT advanced crystal systems facility is just a hop away from pocket knives Boston offices so Jeff invited us for a visit to see how sapphire smartphone displays are made an important thing to note right up front is that GT crystal systems isn't as focused on directly producing sapphire displays as it is Unseld analogy that allows other companies to do it the core of that technology is these furnaces there are about 60 at the Salem facility most of which we're busily making sapphire at the time of my visit inside these cylinders at thousands of degrees is where the material that ultimately forms a none scratch Abul smartphone display is forged so here's how that's done a sapphire seed about the size and shape of a hockey puck is placed at the bottom of a single-use molybdenum barrel called a crucible the crucible is then filled with a mixture of condensed corundum which is a crystalline form of aluminum oxide and a material called crackle which is uncrystallized sapphire material left over from previous runs the full crucible is then placed inside the furnace where it sits atop a finger a small platform cooled by liquid helium that prevents the sapphire seed from melting too early the whole shebang is sealed the air is evacuated and the temperature is brought up to 2,200 degrees Celsius to allow the materials to melt together the temperature varies as the material is put through a series of cooling cycles over the next 16 or 17 days during that time the Sapphire slowly crystallizes from bottom to top and the end result is this a cylindrical section of industrial sapphire called a bull the typical recipe produces a 115 kilogram chemically identical to the Sapphire dug from the ground bulls are marked and separated into more and less desirable regions cores can be drilled and cuts made for various applications like LED production or the manufacturing of airplane windows making a smartphone display out of this sapphire material is fairly simple a rectangular section of specific dimensions is cut smaller for iPhones and virtues and larger for galaxy notes and the like it's polished not just to increase clarity but to strengthen it further then it's cut into the appropriate thickness and polished some more a few hole punches for button and speaker penetrations and voila a thin light screen protector harder than Gorilla Glass harder even than any material except for diamonds a practically unscratched will display coating Jeff told me that accessory applications like that are already in the works from other companies but GT advanced is also hoping to coordinate with OEMs to include sapphire screens on smartphones right out of the box cost continues to be a big factor but the gap is narrowing where several months ago sapphire displays cost about $30 per smartphone the company told me that current figures are more like $15 with next-generation technology like reusable crucibles coming in the next 12 to 18 months to bring that figure down further to less than 10 bucks a screen it's not the $3 per screen that Gorilla Glass is said to cost but it's definitely much closer again you'll see other companies pushing sapphire smartphone screens much more aggressively under their own brands at first but get ready for a general sapphire awareness campaign coming soon GT advanced is committed not just to creating more sapphire material but creating more capacity for other companies to produce it by selling its furnaces to them that should drive the costs down while pushing availability up which means that sooner rather than later we might all be able to carry our smartphones in the same pocket as our keys coin change and even a handful of beach sand without worrying about scratching our screen to death that's a future we can all get excited about it's going to do it for now be sure to check out our hands-on with the sapphire material at MWC it's part of our Barcelona collection there on YouTube subscribe to us on YouTube follow us on all the usual social media channels stay tuned for a lot more from pocket now thanks for watching see you next time