Why Apple Is Investing in Sapphire Glass for The iPhone 6

It is now fairly clear that Apple is investing heavily in the production and machining of sapphire glass for its future products. Sapphire glass isn’t a new material, but it’s only in recent years, due to improved manufacturing methods, that we’ve started to see it used commercially. The iPhone 5′s camera was protected by a small piece of sapphire glass, and the iPhone 5S’s new home button/fingerprint scanner is made from sapphire glass. Historically, sapphire has been used for the front cover of high-end wristwatches. Now, it seems Apple is preparing to launch an iPhone or iWatch with its entire front face protected by sapphire glass. Why is sapphire glass suddenly so hot? After leading the pack for a few years, has Corning’s Gorilla Glass finally met its match?

Despite its name, sapphire glass isn’t actually a glass — it’s a single crystal of transparent sapphire. This sapphire is created synthetically, using a similar process to how the semiconductor industry grows single crystals of silicon (the Czochralski process). Basically, a tiny piece of sapphire (a seed crystal) is dipped into a vat of molten alumina (Al2O3), and then slowly drawn upwards, forming very long, carrot-shaped crystals called boules (part of a boule is pictured above). These crystals are then sliced with a saw, and shaped/polished accordingly. (The same method is used to slice silicon wafers from large silicon boules.)


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