The health care market holds enormous potential for the deployment of UV-C LEDs.
UV-C LED solutions also enable point-of-use water treatment for consumers; Imagine being able to purify your water with a light the size of a pencil eraser in your kitchen or in a portable water bottle, with water from any faucet.
Germs are everywhere.
They’re on our clothes, in our hospitals, and even in the water, we drink every day.
Humans are resilient to a certain degree, but recent health crises such as the Zika virus and the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, have been a wake-up call.
Even in today’s seemingly sanitized world, persistent environmental health threats in our water and on everyday surfaces can cause serious damage, and the problem is far more severe than many realize.
According to the World Health Organization, more than one billion people lack a reliable source of clean drinking water that’s nearly one in every seven people.
Reverse osmosis and distillation systems are notoriously inefficient, wasting three gallons of water for each gallon of clean water produced.
Ultraviolet-C light with a wavelength range below 290 nanometers has been used for disinfection for more than a century, preventing bacteria from reproducing in surfaces and water to create a sterile environment.
Rather than vaporizing toxic mercury to generate light from the UV portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, UV-C LEDs use semiconductor technology to achieve the same benefits while completely eliminating the risks associated with mercury-vapor based technologies.
UV-C LEDs emitting at 280-nanometer wavelength also do not produce harmful ozone during the disinfection process.
Due to recent advancements, UV-C LED technology is now available in the most powerful form of its size, producing tens of, or over a hundred, milliwatts of disinfection power at a size as small as a few millimeters squared.
This enables unparalleled flexibility to incorporate into a range of products, from self-disinfecting water bottles and pitchers to hospital surface cleaners.
While the United States certainly benefits from these advancements, the largest markets for on-demand UV water treatment solutions are in emerging markets such as China, where the water can be dangerous to drink from the tap.
UV-C LED solutions enable point-of-use water treatment for consumers-imagine being able to purify your water with a light the size of a pencil eraser in your kitchen or in a portable water bottle, with water from any faucet.
By bringing effective water treatment solutions to the consumer market, UV-C LED technology could help prevent millions of deaths per year and transform the way communities interact with their most precious natural resource.
The health care market also holds enormous potential for the deployment of UV-C LEDs; the applications are seemingly limitless.
Handheld UV-C devices could disinfect everything from paper files to clinicians’ scrubs, which often carry some of the most potentially dangerous bacteria, including germs that cause pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and drug-resistant infections such as MRSA. The possibilities are endless.
Just as microchips sparked a flurry of innovation that generated incredible hardware and devices that most of us never imagined, UV-C LED technologies promises to do the same.
Some sectors are ripe for transformation such as water treatment and hospital surfaces, but these strong components are poised to go much further, bringing new health protections to industries from manufacturing to public transportation.
More broadly, UV-C LEDs can help reduce the fear from tap water and “Dirty” public spaces, giving consumers around the world peace of mind while creating healthier and more productive societies.
