Study Accounts for Glass ‘Relaxation’ in Next-Generation Display Production

Next-generation displays will feature increased resolution and performance, but getting there will require “a tightening of the tolerance for glass relaxation,” said a study published Tuesday in the Journal of Chemical Physics. Display manufacturers can account for a certain level of relaxation in the glass, if it’s known and reproducible, said the study, which was co-written by engineers from Corning and Qilu University of Technology in Jinan, China. Fluctuations in the relaxation behavior of glass tend to introduce uncertainty into the manufacturing process, possibly leading to misalignment of pixels within displays, the study said. But research has been lacking into what governs fluctuations in the relaxation behavior of glass and how the fluctuations can be predicted and accounted for in the production process, it said. “Glass is a thermodynamically unstable material that continually relaxes toward the supercooled liquid state,” said John Mauro, Corning senior research manager-glass research, one of the study’s authors, in a statement. “This relaxation is a spontaneous process that’s accelerated during heat treatment.” The study focuses on how much the magnitude of the relaxation varies due to slight thermal variations experienced by the glass -- either during the initial glass formation or during the panel manufacturing process, Mauro said. Determining the parameters that control relaxation fluctuations should help guide future glass composition, he said.