Corning, the glass and ceramics producer, has just announced its "Corning Lotus Glass" high performance glass. Rather than being used for the front of displays, like Gorilla Glass, Lotus will be used as a substrate on which to build existing display technologies - e.g. liquid crystal (LCD) and thin film transister (TFT) displays. The key benefit of Lotus is its high annealing point which allows it to undergo high energy deposition processes without sagging or warping. In turn, this produces stronger and less distorted displays.

Annealing glass invovles heating it to the point where it is still stiff enough to maintain its structure, but is soft enough for internal stresses in its crystalline structure to relax. Once the internal stresses are relieved, the glass is much stronger.

As part of building TFT-LCD displays, a layer of Silicon has to be deposited on a sheet of glass with the Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process. As you might expect, this is a high temperature operation, so as to maintain the plasma's state.

From Corning's press release:

“Corning Lotus Glass has a high annealing point that delivers the thermal and dimensional stability our customers require to produce high-performance displays,” said Andrew Filson, worldwide commercial director, Display Technologies, and vice president, Corning Holding Japan GK. “Because of its intrinsic stability, it can withstand the thermal cycles of customer processing better than conventional LCD glass substrates. This enables tighter design rules in advanced backplanes for higher resolution and faster response time.”

The thermal consistency of Corning Lotus Glass allows it to retain its shape and surface quality during high-temperature processing.  This helps guard against thermal sag and warp, which improves the integration of components onto the glass.

Corning Lotus Glass has been qualified and is in production.