UVC LED is expected to become the future of public places disinfection ‘magic weapon’! In 2003, ‘all together, fight SARS’ situation is still fresh in our minds.

Today, 17 years later, the outbreak of new coronavirus in Wuhan caused by the rapid spread of the pneumonia epidemic in just over a month's time, the number of confirmed cases nationwide has exceeded 10,000, only the Hubei Province, the cumulative number of reported cases has exceeded 10,000 cases, and this number is still increasing, the prevention and control of the situation is grim.

At the same time, foreign countries have also appeared in new cases of pneumonia, many countries declared a state of public health emergency. 30 January, the World Health Organization announced that China's new coronavirus outbreak as an ‘international concern of public health emergencies’.

At present, the fight against the new coronavirus has become a national battle, with governments, organisations and units at all levels working together in solidarity to combat the outbreak and ensure the health and safety of the people.

A significant proportion of patients diagnosed in the outbreak were infected while travelling on public transport such as aeroplanes and trains. In order to curb the rapid spread of the virus and cut off the source of the virus, the three major airports in the United States have activated UVC ultraviolet germicidal robots to fully sterilise the inner compartments of all incoming and outgoing aircraft.

The U.S. focuses on public health and safety, and the way it applies UVC to sterilise airports is worth learning from.

Why can UVC LED sterilise? Its working principle is to destroy the microbial cell DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid) of the molecular structure, resulting in the growth of cells and (or) regenerative cell death, to achieve the effect of sterilisation and disinfection. In particular, the 240nm-280m band of ultraviolet light is the most effective disinfection band. All coronaviruses are single-stranded positive-stranded RNA viruses.

In this new coronavirus epidemic, ‘UV disinfection lamps’ are in high demand, and many lighting companies are concerned about their country and generously donate UV disinfection lamps to support the prevention and control of the new type of pneumonia. Compared with traditional sterilisation methods, UV germicidal lamps have a more thorough sterilisation effect, inactivating micro-organisms, thus helping to create a safer indoor working environment.

Due to the relatively closed space in public places, such as hospitals, shopping malls, office buildings, airports, etc., where crowds gather and the air is poorly circulated, the risk of viral infection is higher, and disinfection is particularly important in the prevention and control of epidemics.With the performance of safe, environmentally friendly, compact, high efficiency, low power consumption, and the characteristics of no chemical residue, UVC LEDs can play an important role in the disinfection and germicidal disinfection in public places, and will be increasingly used in the future. Get more and more applications.

At the same time, with the development of the industry, the application of UVC LED form will be more and more rich, customised products will be more abundant, can cope with a variety of application scenarios, especially in public places, is very conducive to reducing and isolating the spread of viruses and bacteria and transmission.

In addition to ultraviolet germicidal lamps, UVC LED has also come into the general consumer market, such as air purifiers, home appliances, etc., the market application is quite extensive, and create many emerging markets, including baby products, daily contact with mobile phones, escalators, household products cleaning such as toothbrushes, cabinet lights, sports water bottles, thermos flasks and so on.

In fact, the development of UVC LEDs is also in line with the Minamata Convention for international environmental protection. The Minamata Convention, which bans mercury, entered into force in August 2017, ordering countries to gradually reduce the production and trade of mercury-containing products from 2020, including mercury-containing batteries, switches, energy-saving lamps, and cosmetics, as well as replacing mercury-using thermometers and blood pressure monitors by 2020, and the development of UVC LEDs is also in line with the requirements of the Minamata Convention, which is an international environmental protection treaty. More than 90 countries, including Japan, China , EU, etc., are in need of UV LEDs to replace these UV mercury lamps in the field of UV lamps for domestic and industrial use, which has accelerated the incentive for the UV LED market to take off around the world.

And with the continuous progress of technology, the cost-effectiveness and luminous efficiency of UVC LEDs will be less and less distant from mercury lamps, and several domestic manufacturers are striving to make their products cost-effective, so that UVC LEDs can benefit the public.

According to the 2019 Deep UV LED Application Market Report published by LEDinside, the global UV LED market size reached $299 million in 2018, and the market size is expected to reach $991 million by 2023, with a CAGR of 27% from 2018-2023.The broad development prospect of UV LED is attracting more and more manufacturers to enter.