Although UV rays are potentially dangerous to living things in everyday life, such as sunburn, UV rays will provide many beneficial effects in a variety of fields. Like standard visible light LEDs, the development of UV LEDs will bring more convenience to many different applications.
The latest technological developments are expanding parts of the UV LED market to new heights of product innovation and performance. Design engineers are noticing that the new technology of UV LEDs can yield huge profit, energy and space savings compared to other alternative technologies. Next-generation UV LED technology has five important advantages, which is why the market for this technology is expected to grow by 31% over the next 5 years.
Wide range of uses
The spectrum of ultraviolet light contains all wavelengths from 100nm to 400nm in length and is generally subdivided into three categories: UV-A (315-400 nanometers, also known as long-wave ultraviolet), UV-B (280-315 nanometers, also known as medium wave) Ultraviolet), UV-C (100-280 nanometers, also known as short-wave ultraviolet).
Dental instrumentation and identification applications were early applications of UV LEDs, but performance, cost and durability benefits, as well as increased product life, are rapidly increasing the use of UV LEDs. Current uses of UV LEDs include: optical sensors and instruments (230-400nm), UV authentication, barcodes (230-280nm), sterilization of surface water (240-280nm), identification and body fluid detection and analysis (250-405nm), Protein analysis and drug discovery (270-300nm), medical light therapy (300-320nm), polymer and ink printing (300-365nm), counterfeiting (375-395nm), surface sterilization/cosmetic sterilization (390-410nm) ).
Environmental impact - lower energy consumption, less waste and no hazardous materials
Compared to other alternative technologies, UV LEDs have clear environmental benefits. Compared to fluorescent (CCFL) lamps, UV LEDs have 70% lower energy consumption. In addition, the UV LED is ROHS certified and does not contain mercury, a harmful substance commonly found in CCFL technology.
UV LEDs are smaller in size and more durable than CCFLs. Because UV LEDs are vibration- and shock-resistant, breakage is rare, reducing waste and expense.
Increase longevity
Over the past decade, UV LEDs have been challenged in terms of lifetime. Despite its many benefits, UV LED usage has dropped significantly because the UV beam tends to break down the LED's epoxy resin, reducing the lifetime of the UV LED to less than 5,000 hours.
The next generation of UV LED technology features a "hardened" or "UV-resistant" epoxy encapsulation, which, while offering a lifetime of 10,000 hours, is still far from adequate for most applications.
Over the past few months, new technologies have solved this engineering challenge. For example, a TO-46 rugged package with glass lens was used to replace the epoxy lens, which extended its service life by at least ten times to 50,000 hours. With this major engineering challenge and issues related to absolute stabilization of a wavelength resolved, UV LED technology has become an attractive option for a growing number of applications.
Performance
UV LEDs also offer significant performance advantages over other alternative technologies. UV LEDs provide a small beam angle and a uniform beam. Due to the low efficiency of UV LEDs, most design engineers are looking for a beam angle that maximizes output power in a certain target area. With ordinary UV lamps, engineers must rely on using enough light to illuminate the area for uniformity and compactness. For UV LEDs, the lens action allows most of the output power of the UV LED to be concentrated where it is needed, allowing for a tighter emission angle.
To match this performance, other alternative technologies would require the use of other lenses, adding additional cost and space requirements. Because UV LEDs do not require additional lenses to achieve tight beam angles and uniform beam patterns, lower power consumption and increased durability, UV LEDs cost half as much to use compared to CCFL technology.
Cost-effective dedicated options build a UV LED solution for a specific application or use standard technology, the former often being more practical in terms of cost and performance. UV LEDs are used in arrays in many cases, and consistency of beam pattern and intensity across the array is critical. If one supplier provides the entire integrated array required for a specific application, the total bill of materials is reduced, the number of suppliers is reduced, and the array can be inspected before shipping to the design engineer. In this way, fewer transactions can save engineering and procurement costs and provide efficient solutions tailored to end-application requirements.
Make sure to find a supplier who can provide cost-effective custom solutions and can design solutions specifically for your application needs. For example, a supplier with ten years of experience in PCB design, custom optics, ray tracing and molding will be able to offer a range of options for the most cost-effective and specialized solutions.
In conclusion, the latest technological improvements in UV LEDs have solved the problem of absolute stabilization and greatly extended their lifespan to 50,000 hours. Due to the many advantages of UV LEDs such as enhanced durability, no hazardous materials, low energy consumption, small size, superior performance, cost savings, cost-effective customization options, etc., the technology is gaining traction in markets, industries and multiple uses An attractive option.
In the coming months and years, there will be further improvements, especially in the efficiency program. The use of UV LEDs will grow even faster.
The next major challenge for UV LED technology is efficiency. For many applications using wavelengths below 365nm, such as medical phototherapy, water disinfection and polymer therapy, the output power of UV LEDs is only 5%-8% of the input power. When the wavelength is 385nm and above, the efficiency of the UV LED increases, but also only 15% of the input power. As emerging technologies continue to address efficiency issues, more applications will begin to adopt UV LED technology.
Post time: Feb-21-2022