It can be seen how worried people are about the broken mobile phone, the mobile phone screen is defaulted to be the most vulnerable place of the mobile phone, a careless fall is hundreds of thousands of pieces, coupled with the popularity of wireless charging function, many mobile phones before and after the use of glass, a time may fall 2 pieces of glass.
Daily scratches, although not completely unusable, but it is also disgusting to watch, scratches and cracks themselves are also one of the causes of the phone to break down.
Although technology is always advancing, who wants to be "just in case"?
Changing materials was once considered one of the ultimate ways to prevent a phone from breaking down, such as replacing glass with a stronger diamond.
In fact, there's a company called Akhan that's going to do that.
Glass too fragile? Then try it with a diamond
Diamond, that is, the raw material of unpolished diamonds, has the advantages of good light transmittance and high hardness after treatment, and is considered one of the best materials for screens used to decorate or protect electronic products such as mobile phones.
Ever since scientists discovered in 1979 that natural diamonds are actually a mineral made up of carbon, the industry has been experimenting with cultivating artificial diamonds, and as early as the end of the last century, the industry has evolved a variety of different technologies.
At present, the more mainstream technologies are high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) technology and chemical meteorological deposition (CVD) technology, the former is to imitate the natural formation of diamond high temperature and high pressure environment, the manufacturing cost is relatively lower, the latter is to take the hydrocarbon gas mixture to cultivate diamond, the setting is more flexible, simple, the two methods have their own advantages.
There are also many application directions for artificially cultivated diamonds, there are developments in the direction of jewelry, trying to cultivate high-purity, high-weight artificial diamonds, after polishing and cutting, the effect is very close to natural diamonds, the human eye is almost indistinguishable, often relying on professional machines to identify.
▲ Artificial diamonds of various colors. Image courtesy of Gia
Artificial diamonds that develop in the direction of industry are different, which tend to pay more attention to the characteristics of light transmittance, refractive index, hardness, thermal conductivity and other industrial fields.
AKHAN is an industrial artificial diamond company and has developed a range of diamond cultivation and technologies for display screen protectors.
In 2017, AHKAN launched miraj Diamond glass technology, which in short is coated with a diamond coating on the glass, which can be up to 100 nanometers thin, only 10000th the thickness of a hair.
▲ The iterative Miraj Diamond glass technology. Image credit: Akhan
This not only maintains a very high screen transmittance, but also the screen thickness has hardly changed, after all, the thickness of the mobile phone glass is still measured in millimeters that are much larger than nanometers.
Akhan said that Miraj Diamond glass reproduces the ultra-high hardness, scratch resistance and fall resistance of diamonds, and under the test of third-party institutions, its hardness is 10 times that of flagship competitors.
Diamond itself is the hardest substance in nature, the relative hardness itself is very high, in the field of metal cutting can often see its figure, anti-scratching ability or a certain guarantee.
At this point, it is Akhan who shows the advantages of his new technology to the outside world, and no one knows how the actual product performs.
This is not the end, now most of the mobile phone screen is equipped with an oleophobic layer and anti-glare coating, the former makes the slide smoother, can avoid water and oily substances attached to the phone, the latter makes the screen have a certain anti-reflective ability, but the oleophobic layer will slowly disappear with use.
According to Akhan, Miraj Diamond glass technology will not have such a problem, the nano-diamond coating itself has the property of repelling water and oily substances, there is no need to add another oleophobic layer, and the Miraj Diamond multi-layer glass itself also has an integrated anti-glare layer.
▲ Image courtesy of Akhan
Akhan responded to the question with two comparative tests, the first being a drop comparison test, placing steel balls of the same size at the same height, and placing a fifth-generation Corning Gorilla Glass and Miraj Diamond hybrid glass under the steel balls.
Snapping, the steel balls fell vertically, corning gorilla glass shattered in response, and Miraj Diamond mixed glass did not.
The other is the microindentation test, Akhan commissioned Northwestern University in the United States, in the laboratory using microscopy technology to complete the test, the products involved in the test are super porcelain crystal glass (Ceramic Shield) and Miraj Diamond hybrid glass, the former is the iPhone 12 used in the glass prototype products,
▲ Comparison of micro stress tests. Image credit: Akhan
Miraj Diamond hybrid glass proved to be 3 times stronger than the prototype of supercrystalline glass, which can withstand a pressure of 36 GPa and 12 GPa.
So, can it be popularized?
There is no doubt that Miraj Diamond hybrid glass is a technology with great potential, but only high hardness and super resistance to scratching are not enough to make it popular, even if these two points are the material properties that people care about the most, who does not want a mobile phone that cannot be broken.
Sapphire, the last challenger of glass, gave the answer with actual experience, also has a stronger resistance to scratching and hardness, the same is an artificial gemstone, sapphire but failed to replace the glass popularized into the mobile phone screen, and finally applied more on the lens protection glass.
HTC is one of the few manufacturers that use sapphire on the phone cover
Why?
Cost, light transmittance, toughness, etc. are the reasons, the current Akhan given most of the comparison tests are prototype glass product comparison, the final application on the mobile phone will be affected by the change of mobile phone structure is still unknown.
Although Miraj Diamond hybrid glass is based on nano-diamond coating and has the opportunity to be applied to flexible screens, there is still a long way to go before it can be truly applied in folding screen mobile phones, and Akhan also said that it will be in the next generation of hybrid glass technology to support flexible bending characteristics.
Akhan has said that in 2019, it will launch a product using Miraj Diamond hybrid glass with mobile phone manufacturers, and the result is obvious - jump tickets.
▲ Image from: Akhan
In this regard, Akhan said that the reason is that the exclusive partner has withdrawn from the mobile phone industry, and the product cannot be released. They also ran into quality problems in mass production, "not one piece, but a million pieces," says Adam Khan, founder of Akhan.
Although Akhan said that it has found a mass production quality solution in the trial production of mobile phone glass, it will take a lot of time to re-cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers and test and verify.
There are many new materials that perform well in the laboratory, but it is not an easy task to get out of the laboratory and come to people's daily lives.
At the same time, Akhan's competitors are developing rapidly, and Corning's latest Gorilla Glass Victus has the overall performance far exceeding the fifth generation, the drop-proof height has been increased to 2 meters, and the anti-scratching ability has also been improved, which is 2 times that of the previous generation.
▲ The Samsung Note 20 ultra is equipped with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus
2 meters, which has covered most of the scene where people's mobile phones fell, unless it was dropped from a high altitude.
At this time, whether miraj diamond hybrid glass can achieve an overwhelming advantage compared with Gorilla glass Victus is a question that Akhan needs to answer.
The good news is that Akhan recently completed a $20 million funding round, along with the introduction of executives from well-known tech companies like Xperi.
The support of money and talent may allow us to use mobile phones based on Miraj Diamond hybrid glass technology faster, so that the future of "unbroken mobile phones" will come earlier.