Asahi Glass is all set to show off a brand new type of folding glass for use in mobile displays at Display Week 2018 – which takes place in May. That’s according to a newly released schedule for the event, which lists the company as showing its technology in Los Angeles Center Room 515B on May 23 at 11:40 in the morning, local time. Of course, that means there aren’t many details about the glass itself but the company says it is chemically strengthened and measures in at just 0.07 mm thick. Moreover, despite how thin that really is, it is also claimed to have been created with a process that gives it up to 80-percent higher impact resistance than competing glass featuring chemical strengthening. It will be interesting to see whether that claim holds up since Asahi Glass is the manufacturer of Dragontrail, which makes its top competitor the widely used Corning Gorilla Glass.
In the meantime, perhaps the most notable feature of this new, as-yet-unnamed glass is that it has been listed under the event’s categorically divided days as a technology for flexible displays. That may mean it has a future in applications involving the folding screens everybody has been clamoring to get their hands on but which have yet to impress. However, the company may not go that far. This could also simply be used in displays with curves as an alternative to other glass types that are available. Whatever the case may be, the schedule notes that the bending stress of the glass comes in at around 1200MPa – that’s 1200-megapascals or around 1.2 billion pascals. For those who may not know, a pascal is typically considered to equate to one newton per square meter. Jargon aside, that’s just an impressive amount of pressure, equivalent to “durability with a curvature radius of 2.5mm.”
Whether or not those claims bear out remains to be seen but the new glass could push mobile technology design forward by a substantial amount – if OEMs choose to use Asahi’s new glass. The event is just around the corner, so nobody is going to have to wait for very long to get a better idea of exactly what the new material is capable of.