This isn't new, I've read articles on AlON before. Synthetic Sapphire is more interesting in that its use is growing quickly due to demand for LED and laser su

This isn't new, I've read articles on AlON before. Synthetic Sapphire is more interesting in that its use is growing quickly due to demand for LED and laser substrates. Large single crystals are grown and sliced into wafers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyropoulos_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyropoulos_process New producers of the High purity Alumina (HPA) needed to produce sapphire are coming online, perhaps prices will come down enough that phone screens are an application, but I suspect that this is marketing speculation from the HPA makers to attract investors. For example this presentation from a HPA company speculated in 2015 that the iphone 7 would use a sapphire screen, which turned out to be wrong: https://www.altechchemicals.com/sites/altechchemicals.com/files/asx-announcements/6738553.pdf https://www.altechchemicals.com/sites/altechchemicals.com/fi...