Didn’t Scotty come up with this already?
Star Trek’s transparent aluminum.
Sapphire is aluminum oxide
Wonder Woman’s transparent plane?
And we just had a transparent Aluminium post about a week ago too....Lot of cool material science stuff going on!
How transparent?
Be nice to have an absolutely unbreakable crystal for the display.
This means I can live in a glass house and throw stones.
By Kevin Bullis
November 25, 2014
MIT Technology Review
In the year leading up to the release of the iPhone 6, Apple invested more than $1 billion in an effort to make sapphire one of the device’s big selling points. Making screens out of the nearly unscratchable material would have helped set the new phone apart from its competitors.
When Apple announced the iPhone 6 this September, however, it didn’t have a sapphire screen, only a regular glass one. And a month later, the small New Hampshire-based company chosen to supply Apple with enormous quantities of cheap sapphire, GT Advanced Technologies, declared bankruptcy.
Recent documents from GT’s bankruptcy proceedings, and conversations with people familiar with operations at Apple and GT, provide several clues as to what went wrong.
Sapphire must have seemed like a perfect material for a smartphone screen. It has long been used as a cover for luxury watches, and Apple has used it to cover the cameras and fingerprint sensors in some iPhones since October 2013. But making large pieces of sapphire—enough for a smartphone screen—would normally cost 10 times as much as using glass.
By Luke Dormehl
October 8, 2024
Cult of Mac
Apple says it is “surprised” after GT Advanced Technologies, the supplier previously rumored to make ultra-strong sapphire glass displays for the iPhone 6, says it will file for bankruptcy. The announcement appears to mark the end of the road for sapphire glass iPhone screens, a highly anticipated upgrade that promised to make devices more durable but never arrived.
Up until the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus release, sapphire glass screens remained one of the biggest rumored upgrades. Ahead of the devices’ unveiling, the prospect excited many people. YouTube videos purporting to show iPhone 6 sapphire displays resisting knife scrapes got people amped. One survey even showed that consumers’ most-anticipated iPhone 6 feature was a sapphire display.
To try and make this a reality, Apple signed a deal with GT Advanced Technologies in November 2013. The pact included a $578 million payment from Apple to speed up “the development of its next generation, large capacity ASF furnaces to deliver low cost, high volume manufacturing of sapphire material.”
This would take place at a plant in Mesa, Arizona. However, Apple never confirmed its interest in sapphire iPhone displays. Still, as the rumors grew stronger, GT’s stock price rose.
Materials Science was the most boring, to me, class in my Engineering Education when I was in College.
However, I have to admit, looking at it through the lens of this article, It’s kind of sexy!
“Engineers create transparent material with hardness comparable to tungsten metal”
“The mechanical properties showed some reduction compared to pure sapphire.”
Wait; what? That doesn’t seem like the best title for this article.
“Sapphire is such a high-value material because of its hardness and many other favorable properties,” explains lead researcher Chih-Hao Chang, an associate professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, in a statement. “But the same properties that make it attractive also make it difficult to manufacture at small scales.”
Yet somehow, a few thousand years ago, Moses was able to smash those tablets to bits and save 'em for a rainy day.
⛈️
Sapphire nanostructures!
In part (if people think the volume of my posts are voluminous enough...):
JERUSALEM
JERUand the sanctuary in the centre of JerUSAlem,
and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary
and the ark in the centre of the [S] holy place (cf. Orion's ... Belt in the center of the "S" path to the Moon and back), and Neil [ניל] in the middle of the center star Alnilam [אלנילם])
and the Foundation Stone before the holy place,
because from it the world was founded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_Stone#Jewish_significance
ALEMS: Sierra (mountain range, "saw")
"I am operating astern propulsion."
Morse ("Moses"*) Code:
...
(ellipsis: something is missing; the "More" menu)
sapphire nanostructures:
Charity, the blue box
🟦
S is for Sapphire [ספיר] cube:
https://www.mesora.org/maimonidestablets.htm
*If only people would learn how to code! (it's the real meaning of playtime) --
Morse Surname Meaning
Welsh and English: variant of Morris.
Americanized form of various like-sounding Jewish surnames especially Moses.
https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=morse
Moses picks up each precious piece of the tablets, he collects every shard, and he lovingly places every piece in the holy Ark, conveying a message that guides the Jewish heart for all time.
The breaking of the Law is one the tragedies on the 17th of Tammuz, which was America's birthday in 1776.
"Jewish heart" [לב יהודי]
<--->
"The 4th of July" [ה-ד' ביולי]
Oh hey, BTW that first famous Morse telegraph message "What Hath God Wrought" (from Num 23:23) was sent on May 24, 1844.
This was Sivan 6 on the Jewish calendar -- Shavous, the day of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, also the traditional date for the birth and death of King David.
In the Jewish world, that verse is located in the 5th reading (Thursdays) of Parshat Balak, the 40th parsha.
It just might be an important detail. You read it here first. 😉
Bkmk