Development of Diamond based LED with Improved Output Power for Sterilization of Viruses by AIST
With increase in epidemic diseases caused by viruses such as H1N1 at a global level sterilization is becoming a critical necessity for society in their daily life. Up to now, sterilization has been carried out using heat, chemicals and UV light, where UV light posses many advantages such as being effective against thermotolerent bacteria, while not having any adverse chemical effects, and at the same time it directly acts on the bacterial DNA to inhibit the viruses proliferation. In this case, light with wavelength of around 260nm at which DNA absorbs light is capable of significantly sterilizing bacterial. Currently, mercury lamps that emits 254 nm UV light are being used to fulfill this task, however use of mercury in these lamps make them environmentally unfriendly, leaving researchers and manufacturers alike to develop semiconductor LEDs in achieving this task. So far, the development of UV LEDs has been focused in using LEDs that are composed of widely used gallium nitride, but the use of this material will make it difficult to fabricate LEDs capable of emitting light of shorter wavelengths. For this reason LEDs that emit light of wavelength 350 nm or shorter are not available commercially. Read more
