Material scientists at the University of Bayreuth in Germany have developed a glass that is more than twice as strong as Gorilla Glass. Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus.
Editor’s take: Scientists have devised a new way to make super-strong glass. The process mixes regular oxide glass with aluminosilicate at extremely high temperatures and pressure. The resulting material has some publications calling it the «strongest glass ever,» but is it?
Material scientists at the University of Bayreuth in Germany have developed a glass that is more than twice as strong as Gorilla Glass. Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus is its toughest material, with a fracture toughness of 0.76 megapascals (MPa). The glass produced in the Bayreuth study – published in this month’s Nature Materials journal – has a strength of 1.99 MPa. The researchers claim it surpasses «any other reported bulk oxide glasses,» prompting Extreme Tech to post the sensationalizing headline, «Scientists Use Extreme Heat and Pressure to Create Strongest Glass Ever.» But is it the strongest glass ever?
The headline got me thinking about a time in 2016 when people went nuts about Star Trek predicting the discovery of transparent aluminum. You might recall the scene in Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, where Scotty and Bones convince a polymer engineer to provide them with materials to build a tank to house a whale in trade for the formula for transparent aluminum (below).
