Aussie researchers have answer to smashed phone screens
The frustrating and expensive process of replacing a shattered smart phone screen could soon be a thing of the past.
A group of Australian National University researches believe they have devised a way to transform 'flimsy' glass into flexible, crack and shatter-proof shields, ABC news reports.
Lead researcher Charles Le Losq said the glass most commonly used on phones, alumino-silicate, left a lot to be desired - and not much was actually known about it.
Lead researcher Charles Le Losq (pictured) may have developed a way to make phone screens crack and shatter-proof after his team created a new 'nano-structure'
He said through adding elements like sodium and potassium, he and his team were able to achieve the 'first step' of building a new glass product and form a 'nano-structure'.
Dr Le Losq said the findings could be used to develop a more flexible type of glass with a special resistance to fractures, that could last up to 10 years.
'We inferred that we could use this knowledge to search for new properties and make glass harder'
'This will require further work of course and will also require some collaboration with the industry.'
Dr Le Losq began work on the project in 2010, alongside seven researchers from six universities in Australia, France, the United Kingdom and China worked together on the study.
Dr Le Losq said the glass most commonly used on phones, alumino-silicate, left a lot to be desired - and not much was actually known about it
Dr Le Losq (pictured) said the findings could be used to develop a more flexible type of glass with a special resistance to fractures, that could last up to 10 years
While having made progress towards developing crack resistant screen, the team were still working on it having scratch resistant properties.
One of the difficulties was balancing the hardness - which protects from scratching, and the brittleness - which is weak to cracking.
'On a very fundamental level we're playing with two or three atoms, but now we need to extend this vision … to really understand what happens when you add a particular type of atom in the structure of the glass and how that structure of atoms will change the glass' resistance.'