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Penn State Covid-19 Research

PENN STATE

Killing coronavirus with handheld ultraviolet light device may be feasible

June 02, 2020

by Walt Mills,  Pennsylvania State University 

                 

Using ultraviolet light to disinfect public spaces is  preferable to using harsh chemicals. 

Credit: Jennifer M. Mccann/Penn State                           


A personal, handheld device emitting high-intensity ultraviolet light to disinfect areas by killing the novel coronavirus is now feasible, according to researchers at Penn State, the University of Minnesota and two Japanese universities.                                                                                              


There  are two commonly employed methods to sanitize and disinfect areas from bacteria and viruses—chemicals or ultraviolet radiation exposure. The UV radiation is in the 200 to 300 nanometer range and known to destroy the  virus, making the virus incapable of reproducing and infecting. Widespread adoption of this efficient UV approach is much in demand  during the current pandemic, but it requires UV radiation sources that  emit sufficiently high doses of UV light. While devices with these high  doses currently exist, the UV radiation source is typically an expensive mercury-containing gas discharge lamp, which requires high power, has a  relatively short lifetime, and is bulky.


The solution is to develop high-performance, UV light emitting  diodes, which would be far more portable, long-lasting, energy efficient  and environmentally benign. While these LEDs exist, applying a current  to them for light emission is complicated by the fact that the electrode material also has to be transparent to UV light.


"You have to ensure a sufficient UV light dose to kill all the  viruses," said Roman Engel-Herbert, Penn State associate professor of  materials science, physics and chemistry. "This means you need a  high-performance UV LED emitting a high intensity of UV light, which is  currently limited by the transparent electrode material being used."


While finding transparent electrode materials operating in the  visible spectrum for displays, smartphones and LED lighting is a  long-standing problem, the challenge is even more difficult for  ultraviolet light.


"There is currently no good solution for a UV-transparent electrode,"  said Joseph Roth, doctoral candidate in Materials Science and  Engineering at Penn State. "Right now, the current material solution  commonly employed for visible light application is used despite it being too absorbing in the UV range.  There is simply no good material choice for a UV-transparent conductor  material that has been identified."


Finding a new material with the right composition is key to advancing  UV LED performance. The Penn State team, in collaboration with  materials theorists from the University of Minnesota, recognized early  on that the solution for the problem might be found in a recently  discovered new class of transparent conductors. When theoretical predictions pointed to the material strontium niobate, the researchers reached out  to their Japanese collaborators to obtain strontium niobate films and  immediately tested their performance as UV transparent conductors. While  these films held the promise of the theoretical predictions, the  researchers needed a deposition method to integrate these films in a  scalable way.


"We immediately tried to grow these films using the standard  film-growth technique widely adopted in industry, called sputtering,"  Roth said. "We were successful."

This is a critical step towards technology maturation which makes it  possible to integrate this new material into UV LEDs at low cost and  high quantity. And both Engel-Herbert and Roth believe this is necessary  during this crisis.


"While our first motivation in developing UV transparent conductors  was to build an economic solution for water disinfection, we now realize  that this breakthrough discovery potentially offers a solution to  deactivate COVID-19 in aerosols that might be distributed in HVAC  systems of buildings," Roth explains. Other areas of application for  virus disinfection are densely and frequently populated areas, such as  theaters, sports arenas and public transportation vehicles such as  buses, subways and airplanes.                                                                                                                           


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