A team of UK scientists think they have invented the secret of making a truly unbreakable display, and they claim it could be put on popular gadgets like phones and TVs by 2018.
The breakthrough comes from the creation of a new kind of electrode, which conducts electricity through the glass.
Traditional electrodes are made from an expensive metal called indium tin oxide (ITO), these new ones are created from mixing silver nanowires with graphene.
While the nanowires are 1/10,000 the width of a human hair, graphene is even thinner. Because of that thinness, the new conductors are extremely flexible and more resistant to cracking and breaking.
Good news for anyone who repeatedly drops their phone.
Physicists at the University of Sussex worked with a microelectrics firm in Oxford to come up with the hybrid electrodes. According to the journal Nanoscale, these new electrodes also conduct electricity better than the older ITO ones.
Given that phones are getting bigger, with larger and more advanced screens, having a bit of hard science in place to prevent breakages can only be a good thing.
"While almost one third of Brits (31%) have damaged a smartphone, we think this figure could grow with the launch of the next iPhone," AJ Forsythe, CEO and founder of iCracked, a smartphone screen replacement service, said.
"In addition, from our experience of fixing the iPhone 6, while curved edges look great, they make phones more susceptible to breaking," he said.
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