Watts-level ultraviolet-C LED integrated light sources for efficient surface and air sterilization

Abstract

With the epidemic of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection, AlGaN-based ultraviolet-C light emitting diodes (UVC-LEDs) have attracted widespread attention for their sterilization application. However, the sterilization characters of high power integrated light sources (ILSs) haven’t been widely investigated before utilizing in public sanitary security. In this work, by integrating up to 195 UVC-LED chips, high power UVC-LED ILSs with a light output power (LOP) of 1.88 W were demonstrated. The UVC-LED ILSs were verified to have efficient and rapid sterilization capability, which have achieved more than 99.9% inactivation rate of several common pathogenic microorganisms within 1 s. In addition, the corresponding air sterilization module based on them was also demonstrated to kill more than 97% of Staphylococcus albus in the air of 20 m3 confined room within 30 min. This work demonstrates excellent sterilization ability of UVC-LED ILSs with high LOP, revealing great potential of UVC-LEDs in sterilization applications in the future.