Sapphire screens - the gem of the mobile world?

In Depth Making the iPhone even more precious

A scratch proof iPhone? Finally!

There's been a lot of talk surrounding sapphire screens for smartphones recently, and it's one of the heavily rumoured features for the upcoming iPhone 6.
Apple has even gone and purchased a sapphire product company, fuelling the rumours of an iPhone 6 appearance further and it could be the catalyst the screen tech needs to catapult it into the mobile mainstream.
So why is it so important? We're here to set the story straight about what sapphire screens are and why we should all be excited for the mobile future.

What exactly is sapphire?

We all know what sapphire is, right? It's that beautiful blue gemstone found on the ring given by Prince William to Kate Middleton for their engagement in 2010.
So why is this precious gem being constantly bandied about as the future of smartphone screens?
In fact sapphire is much more than a gemstone, it is a crystallized form of aluminium oxide which sports a natural blue hue thanks to traces of elements such as iron and titanium.

Why is it good for phones?

Manufactured sapphire has been around for a while and it's used on all of Tag Heuer's watches, as well as being the transparent armour that is currently found on military vehicles and there is some pretty sound reasoning behind this.
It is common knowledge that there is little in the universe that is harder than diamond, a substance that measures 10 on the Mohs mineral hardness scale.
The Mohs scale measures how easily different minerals scratch from 1 to 10, 1 being the softest and 10 being the hardest.

Hopefully there will be less of this

Sapphire measures nine on that scale, only one less than diamond and two to three higher than ordinary glass.
Putting this into context, sapphire mobile screens should be far more scratch and crack resistant than a traditional chemically strengthened glass screen.
Whilst we highly doubt your next phone will be bullet proof like the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Launcher's windscreen, we could be looking at mobile screens that won't crack if dropped, nor scratch if left in a handbag or pocket with a set of keys.

Hasn't sapphire been used before?

With all recent the talk of sapphire screens you'd be forgiven for thinking that its use in the mobile world is something that is completely new.
Anybody with an iPhone 5 or 5S will know (possibly) that's not the case.

There's a layer of sapphire in there

Apple in particular has been using sapphire for a while, with it covering the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the 5S and the camera lenses of both devices.

What about Gorilla Glass?

The use of sapphire in mobile screens places a lot of pressure on the current screen manufacturers, none more so than Corning who produces Gorilla Glass.
It's the screen tech that is currently found on a lot of the high end flagships including the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4, LG G2 and Nokia Lumia 1520.
Figures from Corning's news centre suggest Gorilla Glass is currently found in over 1.5 billion devices, a number that is certainly not to be baulked at.

Yeah, it's called sapphire

The same site also show that sapphire is actually harder to scratch than Gorilla Glass, something that is reiterated by Matthew Hall, Director of the Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology at Alfred University's Kazuo Inamori School of Engineering.
"Chemically strengthened glass can be excellent, but sapphire is better in terms of hardness, strength, and toughness" Hall explained, adding "the fracture toughness of sapphire should be around four times greater than Gorilla Glass – about 3 MPa-m0.5 versus 0.7 MPa-m0.5, respectively."
This comes with some rather large downsides though. Sapphire is both heavier at 3.98g per cubic cm (compared to the 2.54g of Gorilla Glass) as well as refracting light slightly more.