Maybe less than you think.

Every time you touch your phone, a stack of ultra-thin glass layers is right under your fingertip. 

Each layer, though only a fraction of a millimeter thick, has its own composition, with highly specialized properties for creating vibrant, lifelike displays. Each is essential to the performance of your device – whether it’s your smartphone or watch, your TV, or the interactive dashboard in your car.

Together, these glass layers deliver the beautiful, lightweight displays we use every day. And they’re all the result of Corning’s stunning innovations in glass science, optical physics, and state-of-the-art manufacturing.

Let’s look at the layers, and what they do for the devices that connect us to the world. 

Perhaps most familiar to consumers is Corning® Gorilla® Glass, the protective cover glass on most mobile devices on the market today. This cover glass protects and maintains the appearance of the display, and also supports the use of front-facing cameras and various sensors. Often, the back of such devices features a similar protective glass, allowing for wireless charging along with a sleek look and feel.

Behind the cover, more glass layers – substrates to hold the intricate workings of the display – serve very specific functions.

An LCD panel has two glass layers. The color filter is a glass substrate patterned with red, green, and blue to control the image color down to the most minute pixel size. A second substrate, the backplane, is a pristine, stable surface for the intricate electronic system, including a thin-film transistor (TFT) array that reacts with liquid crystal, helping ensure razor-sharp resolutions. 

No matter what their composition or function in the device, all of Corning’s thin display glasses start with our proprietary fusion manufacturing process. This process, invented by Corning in 1964, results in an exceptionally pristine glass surface and reliable supply for display builders around the world.

With decades of glassmaking expertise, Corning understands the deep complexities of glass and the unique demands of both LCD and OLED devices. Corning scientists and engineers have pushed glass performance beyond boundaries once thought to be unbreakable. That scientific leadership has set the standard for the display industry for more than three decades. And it helps ensure that display glass from Corning will be at the heart of tomorrow’s displays, too.