Unbreakable phone screens could be made with a new material

SINCE 2006, when Corning, an American glassmaker, developed Gorilla Glass to give Apple’s first iPhone a scratch-resistance screen, many other types of toughened glass have appeared for use in handsets. But as rugged as they are, people keep cracking and breaking them. Jingwei Hou thinks he has found a way to prevent that.Dr Hou and his colleagues at the University of Queensland, in Australia, are among a number of researchers working on a group of materials called perovskites. The original perovskite, calcium titanium oxide, is a mineral (see picture) discovered in the Ural mountains in 1839 and named after Count Lev Perovski, a Russian mineralogist. Since then, the name has come to be used for a number of materials that share a similar crystal structure.