Conversation

Unfortunately, aluminum gallium nitride alloys only seem to work well down to about 250nm, a bunch higher than 222nm. This needs to get much better. Some experts said a 5-10x improvement for LEDs near 222nm is likely, but it will take many years. (A decade could be optimistic.)
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That’s also not really enough for the best case, universal usage of really cheap disinfecting LEDs all around the world. It also might not get much better, and we’ll be stuck with very low efficiency Far-UVC LEDs, at which point it’s probably better to keep using Excimer lamps.
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But fundamental research into other semiconductor materials could allow much better Far-UVC LEDs. One candidate is hexagonal boron nitride crystals. Another is diamond - which I don’t think will be practical to work with or build LEDs from, but “Diamond LEDs” do sound awesome.
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Plus we won’t have the existing knowledge of how to make it work. Remember the Nobel-prize for Blue LEDs? It’s hard to figure this stuff out. But on the other hand, people haven’t had as a strong reason to look for this in the past - disinfecting air potentially changes that.
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But we definitely don’t want to fool ourselves into assuming there is a silver bullet around the corner. And even once it’s around, it won’t eliminate the need for multi-layered protection against future pandemics - and we should be investing in those other parts now as well.
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