Japanese researchers have developed a new super-hard glass, harder than many metals.

This new, very thin material is made of aluminum oxide and silicon dioxide, and could be used to make window glass, or perhaps the display glass on smartphones to be much more durable.

Researchers have not able to produce glass with aluminum oxide, until now. This makes the glass particularly hard.

The Japanese researchers were able to do so using a novel method. They used a laser to fuse together the necessary ingredients.

The results were a glass more durable than many metals and almost as hard as steel. The next step will be to attempt to mass produce this super-hard glass.

The research has been published in Nature.

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High Elastic Moduli of a 54Al2O3-46Ta2O5 Glass Fabricated via Containerless Processing
Gustavo A. Rosales-Sosa, Atsunobu Masuno, Yuji Higo, Hiroyuki Inoue, Yutaka Yanaba, Teruyasu Mizoguchi, Takumi Umada, Kohei Okamura, Katsuyoshi Kato & Yasuhiro Watanabe
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