Crack Filling of Cover Glasses by Sol-Gel Coatings

Strengthening of glass sheets through the process of ion exchange have been widely used in thinner cover glass for smart phone. The compressive stress improves the ability of the glass surface to withstand damage from mechanical impact. However, the presence of the damage resistant layer makes conventional mechanical and laser cutting of the ion-exchanged glass difficult. Normally, the cutting process will lead to spontaneous glass sheet breakage or shattering. Even successful in some samples, the underlying central tension is exposed on the edge, and the mechanical strength and durability of this edge is degraded. The repair of edge cracks becomes an extremely important issue for the development of single glass based smart phone. The ion exchanged glass plates (Corning IOX-FS) with a thickness of 0.7 mm were selected as the substrate materials. After cutting ion exchanged glass by high penetration diamond scribing wheels, the edge of glass plates can be protected or strengthened with silica sol using roll coating process. It was observed that the strength could be improved achieving 210 % compared to the strength of uncoated glass sheets. The sol-gel coating could improve the strength of the glass mainly by the mechanisms of filling in edge flaws or blunting crack tips. The effects of silica sol and processing parameters of roll coating process on the cracks filling effects were investigated.