This glassmaking process makes breakthroughs possible
Sixty years ago, Corning harnessed the power of gravity to produce glass. The process continues to deliver innovation after innovation.
A curved gaming monitor. A vehicle infotainment system. The latest premium notebook PC.
What do they all have in common?
Glass made with gravity.
Corning scientists made the gravity-harnessing breakthrough – patented as “fusion” – in 1964, but it keeps delivering possibilities year after year.
About 20 years after its invention, fusion helped reshape the display industry by enabling pristine, flat LCD televisions. Fusion has been scaled to make larger, thinner display glass. It’s given us sleek, large-screen televisions, monitors, and tablets. And in recent years, it's helped spark similar transformations for automotive interiors and architectural applications.
Glass made with fusion has helped deliver brilliant color and clarity, while also enabling sleek designs and the reliability customers and consumers count on.
“Inventing fusion wasn’t just a single breakthrough with a single application,” said Gautam Kudva, Corning’s Vice President of Fusion Technology and Engineering. “Fusion has become a time-tested manufacturing platform with continued success, due in large part to our constant focus on improvement and advancements since its invention. It’s allowed us to make glass that has become vital to the way we work, learn, and live. And it feels like we’ve just begun.”
Creating fusion-formed glass
The story begins with the basics of fusion:
Step 1: Heat until molten
A precise recipe of raw materials is mixed until homogenous. It is then heated to form molten glass, using majority of electricity versus natural gas.
Step 2: The isopipe
The molten glass flows over the sides of an open trough shaped like a large V – called an isopipe – and fuses together, cooling and hardening in midair.
Step 3: Finishing
A series of precise glass finishing steps follows as the glass is trimmed, cleaned, and inspected before moving on to Display's customers.
“It's a process Corning has never stopped perfecting,” said Kudva. “And our fusion-formed glass remains a fundamental advantage to our customers across several industries.”
Fusion did that
In fusion's earliest days, Corning produced strengthened vehicle windshields and sunglass lenses, each offering important benefits, but each also ahead of its time.
“Like plenty of other Corning innovations, fusion manufacturing was ready for the challenge when the right opportunity arose,” Kudva said. “Corning's scientists and engineers used fusion to produce the pristine flat glass substrates that made LCD displays possible, right from the industry’s beginnings in the 1980s.”
Since then, Corning consistently delivered breakthroughs in larger and more efficient sizes, which are called Generations, or “Gen" sizes, in the industry. Today, Display has reached Gen 10.5 size, producing glass sheets larger than two king-size mattresses and as thin as a business card.
Fusion for the future
Advanced TVs
You've probably never thought about the glass inside your television, and that's okay. That means it’s working. Corning produces glass in different sizes and thicknesses to meet the needs of many device sizes – from the compact to the colossal. It’s stable, pristine, and works with many display types, such as LCD, OLED, and beyond – letting you focus on your entertainment experience, rather than the material enabling it.
An immersive gaming experience
Today’s premium gaming monitors need to provide excellent resolution and display performance to deliver the ultimate gaming experience. While many of today’s premium monitors already include fusion-formed glass, you’ll also find this thin, reliable material on curved gaming monitors – optimized to meet the demands of immersive gaming. On handheld devices, Corning’s cover glass is tough enough for wherever mobile gaming takes you.
Next-level automotive interiors
Long gone are the clunky dashboards and consoles of the past. Glass created by fusion can be shaped at room temperature, to a car’s interior via Corning® ColdForm™ Technology, bringing an element of futuristic luxury to modern vehicles. Curved infotainment systems integrate the smartphone’s sophistication to the driving experience.
Windshields like never before
Want a driving experience where drivers can see more clearly and EVs can go farther? It’s already here. After applying specialized protective glass coatings to fusion-formed glass, windshields can gain necessary durability, while also realizing the inherent benefits of fusion-formed glass, such as light weight and optical purity. For example, Corning® Fusion5® Glass is the world’s first auto exterior glass designed to help deliver windshields that are lighter in weight, with superior durability and better optical performance, compared to conventional windshields.
Devices that evolve with you
When the mobile consumer electronics market took off, Corning was ready to supply an industry-leading cover glass solution, in large part due to the success and reliability of fusion glass manufacturing. And fusion glass can bring the world to you, wherever you are.
And beyond...
If the possibilities seem endless for fusion glass, you’d be right, Kudva said. And that’s because the researchers at Corning are never quite done building on the legacy that the manufacturing platform has allowed the company to produce.
“It's in Corning's nature to never stop innovating,” said Kudva. “That goes for fusion, too. Corning is always hard at work on enhancements to the fusion platform while also evaluating new markets and applications for fusion-formed glass.”
Wherever we go, we're confident in our patented combination of glass and gravity.