Corning makes Gorilla Glass stronger, more flexible, more scratch-resistant

Hey look! It’s a Photoshopped image with a gorilla.

That’s Corning’s way of showing off its latest scratch- and breakage-resistant glass, Gorilla Glass 3.

It’s three times tougher than the previous material, Gorilla Glass 2, according to a Corning exec interviewed by PC World. It should show 40 percent fewer visible scratches. And even if it does get deeply scratched, it’s far less likely to shatter.

Interestingly, Gorilla Glass can also now be molded onto curved surfaces, so if a manufacturer wanted to extend its device’s display out around the curved edges of the bezel, it can do so, in theory at least.

Gorilla Glass is a chemically-strengthened glass, with a surface toughened through an “ion exchange” process originally developed in Corning’s laboratories in the 1960s. The invention lay dormant for decades until Apple CEO Steve Jobs helped revive it, when he was on the hunt for a scratch-resistant surface to cover the iPhone. The stuff, which is made in Kentucky as well as in Taiwan and Japan, has become phenomenally successful, and is included in more than one billion devices worldwide.

And, yes, I feel for the Corning marketers who had to figure out how to illustrate something transparent whose special property is that it doesn’t show marks. Gorillas are awesome.