Lexy Hamilton-Smith* says a composite glass breakthrough by Queensland researchers could help make phone screens ‘unbreakable’.
Australians destroy or lose more than 1,300 smartphones a day, with cracked and shattered screens the most common way of damaging them.
They have forked out a staggering $755 million over a five-year period to fix them, according to data from the comparison website Finder.
Now, thanks to a crack team of scientists at the University of Queensland working with researchers across the world, smashed phone screens could become a thing of the past.
The team has unlocked technology to produce the next-generation of composite glass used in smart phones, televisions, computers and even LED lights.
Chemical engineer Jingwei Hou said the findings would enable the manufacture of glass screens that are both unbreakable and deliver crystal clear image quality.
“The problem we have every day — I have broken four or five iPhone screens through the whole year — costs all of us a lot to repair,” Dr Hou said.
“When I came into this, I thought ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we could fix the problem getting the screen more flexible and more durable at the same time.’”
He said the glass currently used in phones was very dense and inflexible.
“Which means it breaks.”
To address the breakage issue, he turned to a mineral called perovskite, a calcium titanium oxide crystal.
But Dr Hou said the researchers found perovskite “nanocrystals” were extremely sensitive to light, heat, air and water.
“So our team of chemical engineers and material scientists then developed a revolutionary process to wrap or bind the nanocrystals in porous glass,” he said.
“This process is the key to stabilising the materials, enhancing efficiency and inhibiting the toxic lead ions from leaching out.
“Perovskites are a very functional material, but because of their sensitivity to almost everything they need to be put into the glass.”
They take a raw material, like zinc, and use an organic molecule that can bind to zinc.
They then use mechanical force to turn it into glass.
Millions of tiny holes invisible to the human eye are injected with the nanocrystals and stay protected, wrapped inside.
“By doing that we can stabilise the material and enable it to be used for new products like flexible solar panels, display screens unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, or more detailed medical imaging which would obviously lead to better patient outcomes,” he said.
“It would be the equivalent of upgrading from an iPhone 1 to a DSLR camera.”
UQ faculty of engineering executive dean Vicki Chen said the technology was scalable and opened the door for many applications.
She called it the “holy grail of solar cell technology” because of its ability to also create and convert light.
“The issue always has been stability, stability, stability but the fact we can combine this new generation of materials with perovskite and make it possible to have great stability means it can now be used in industrial applications,” Professor Chen said.
“Perovskites can convert light energy into electrical energy, but you can also excite them with electromagnetic radiation — have them emit all kinds of colours, which means you can have all kind of bright displays, using less energy and have incredible colour resolutions.”
Dr Hou said research was underway in collaboration with the University of Leeds, University of Cambridge and the Université Paris-Saclay.
He said this would enable them to create mobile phones, TVs, computers and virtual reality imaging that had “stunning picture quality and strength”.
Dr Hou said their research would also look at a solar panel that converts lights to energy through the nano glass on a smartphone.
“A solar panel converts light to energy [and] a display screen converts energy to light,” he said.
“It may be possible in future to create one material that can do both.
“So it could be showing a crystal-clear image and then when it’s not in use, it would charge the battery, even from indoor lighting.”
Technology expert and Vertical Hold podcast co-host Alex Kidman said the glass in smartphones had gotten much better over time.
“We have had increasingly more robust glass, especially if you are a buyer of premium phones,” Mr Kidman said.
“But even then there is a bit of a balancing act between rigidity — whether or not it is going to smash — and scratch resistance.
“Because the more rigid you make the glass, paradoxically the more likely it is to scratch.”
He said the Finder 2017 research found Australians smashed more than 460,000 phone a year — about 1,300 a day on average.
Globally, tech companies sell about 1.3 billion smartphones a year.
“A lot of the big phone makers and the way those phones are currently built makes it very difficult to get repairs done by third parties,” Mr Kidman said.
“You usually have to go to them directly or one of their authorised agents.
That costs a whole lot more.
“As soon as you drop it, you have a 50-50 chance of it landing on the screen and cracking.”
He said billions were being spent on research and development, and the UQ research had commercial promise if they could “critically scale it up” for low-cost mass production.
“The question is can we make it for a million phones without each of those phones costing a million dollars.”
He also said there was a risk marketing a product as unbreakable.
“Somebody will always find a way to break it.”
But he said the research was exciting for the industry.
“There are all sorts of added benefits, because a tougher phone, TV or even a light bulb is going to last you a whole lot longer, which means you are talking about less e-waste, potentially less energy usage if they are brighter and have more clarity or indeed an LED behind your smart phone screen.
“So there is all sorts of added benefits to this … it is one of the reasons there is so much money in it.”
The findings have been published in the journal Science.
*Lexy Hamilton-Smith is a news presenter and journalist at the ABC in Brisbane working in news for television, radio and digital, where she reports on education, science and technology, as well as general news.
This article first appeared at abc.net.au.
