Scientists have produced an oxide glass with unprecedented toughness. Under high pressures and temperatures, they succeeded in paracrystallizing an aluminosilicate glass: The resulting crystal-like structures cause the glass to withstand very high stresses and are retained under ambient conditions.
I’d get excited but I feel like every time I read about something like this we never see it actually used in practical application.
This announcement is: We have managed to do this for a small sample in a lab using specialised equipment, likely taking days to produce one test item.
That is a long, long way from: We have scaled this up to a automated process that produces thousands of identical sheets of glass per day that will cover tens of thousands of phones.
The scientists have proved it is possible, there are now another 100 steps for the engineers it work through to see if it can scale economically.
…and with those steps are even more potential points of failure. This is why we shouldn’t get too excited.
It’s promising and I hope it works out, but we should temper our expectations.