A Chinese research institute has created super-thin, ultra-strong sheet glass that can resist the impact force of a car running at 150 kilometers an hour.

Created by the Glass Research Institute in Bengbu City, Anhui Province, a unit of the technical engineering platform of China National Building Material Co., Ltd, the glass is only 0.12 millimeter thick, roughly as thick as a standard A4-sized piece of paper, which is 0.095 mm.

In an experiment led by leading researcher Cao Xin, a 55-gram steel ball was dropped from one meter to hit the glass, equivalent to the impact force made by a family car hitting a wall at a speed of 150 kilometers per hour, and the glass remained intact.

The sheet glass, which came off the production line in April, is the thinnest one mass-manufactured using the float process, according to Cao. Modern windows are usually made from float glass, which is a sheet of glass made by floating molten glass on a bed of molten metal. This method gives the sheet uniform thickness and very flat surfaces.

Cao said the ultra-thin glass could be used widely in the electronic information sector, such as for screens for cellphones, computers and TVs. The thinner the glass, the better the light transmission performance and the flexibility, as well as the lighter the weight, but how to remain its strength at the same time is indeed a global challenge. Cao said his next goal is to mass produce sheet glass at 0.1 millimeters thick.

At the end of the 1950s, the British company Pilkington Glass announced that they successfully developed the float process and countries were lining up to buy the patents, but China was blocked out. Since then the Chinese glass-making industry realized that it must find a path to innovation independently.

Led by chief scientist Peng Shou, the research institute has made a series of strides in recent years, making 0.33-millimeter sheet glass in June 2014, 0.15-millimeter in April 2016 and now 0.12-millimeter.