What’s Chemically strengthen glass vs. Thermally tempered glass

Thermally tempered glass:

The principle is to heat the glass to a suitable temperature(670-720℃) and then cool it quickly, causing the glass surface to shrink sharply and form compressive stress.

However, the glass middle area cools slower and formed tensile stress, which makes the glass obtain higher strength. Generally speaking, the higher the cooling strength, the greater the glass strength.

Chemically strengthened glass:

The process is to sink glass into 400℃ alkali salt solution, then glass surface will have chemically exchange between small radius ions in glass and larger radius ions in the solution.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Thermally tempered glass

Advantages:

1, Low costs, large production capability. Glass tempering can be finished within 10 minutes.

2, High mechanical strength, thermal resistance

3, Safety, the glass will break into small fragments when broken, which can reduce harm to the human body.

Disadvantages

1, Glass self explosion.
Tempered glass can explode during tempering processing, storage, transportation, installation, and even after installation in uncertain times.

2, Glass spontaneous breakage1
Minor edge damage during glass handling, scratch or nick during installation, design flaw, or a natural imperfection results in glass spontaneous breakage.

3, The spontaneous explosion 2
Caused by visible defects in the glass, such as stones, sand particles, bubbles, inclusions, notches, scratches, edge bursts, etc., and unreasonable installation; Or nickel sulfide (NIS) impurities and heterogeneous particles in the glass cause the tempered glass to explode.

4, Tempered glass cannot be further processed
The glass must be cut and polished before the tempering process.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Chemically strengthened glass:

Advantages

1. High strength, uniform stress, good stability, no self-explosion phenomenon, can be further cut and processed, no deform, no optical distortion, and is suitable for the reinforcement of glass products with special shapes and thin glass panel.

2. The strength is 5 to 10 times that of float glass, the bending strength is 3 to 5 times higher, as well is 5-10 times higher impact strength. It improves strength and safety at the same time. Chemically strengthened glass has higher strength than thermally tempered glass based on the same thickness.

3. The resistance to rapid cold and rapid heat is 2-3 times the normal glass, can withstand temperature changes of more than 150LC, is No fragile, and has no spontaneous breakage.

4. No deformation, and can chemically strengthening any shape glass, Such as arc shape, cylindrical shape, bottle shape, box shape, flat shape, etc.

5. Suitable for ultra-thin products below 3mm, no optical deformation, no bending.

Disadvantages:

High production costs, low production efficiency.

Difference Data between Thermally&chemical strengthened glass

Applications:

Thermally tempered glass:

Widely used in places with high mechanical strength and safety requirements, such as curtain walls, facade windows, indoor partitions, furniture, household appliances, partitions near heat sources, and locations subject to severe cold and heat shocks, etc. The tempered glass will always be further processed to be laminated, double glass units to get better thermal, safety, and acoustic performance.

Chemically strengthened glass:

Usually used in electronic display products, such as monitors, televisions, tablets, mobile phones, etc. as screen protection panels.

Meanwhile, chemically strengthened glass are used for architectural glass which cannot be toughened by glass tempering furnace, such as hot bending glass, irregular shape glass, etc， as well as some area require extreme high strength glass such as a high-speed train.

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Category: Thermally tempered glass products